at this point i'd take people who complete tasks
Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
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Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#42I sure wish I could relate to this but I haven't been at a company that hired juniors since i was the junior being hired 15 years ago.
Same. This does not align with my experiences working with early stage startups at all.
Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#43It’s interesting that you have to be an A to tell the rest apart.
And good luck if you have a lot Bs that believe they are As.
Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#44I've met maybe 1-2 people in my whole life who were clearly beneficial 'A' from the get go. There's also a weird 'A' that tries very hard but causes more pain than inspiration. Meaning, they're clearly smart but think that's all that's necessary to be useful. I once worked with an intern from MIT who came in and immediately submitted large PRs everyday that improved the algorithmic complexity for a bunch of functions…
Related, but the best quality to have in a startup is knowing when and what corners to cut instead of going on these side quests.
Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing is that the A's are watching how you treat the C's. They might not have a good gauge of the culture from their own experience because they take care of themselves.
They should be getting praise and more mentoring, not sure why they'd worry about how the C's are being treated. It should also be clear to the C's that they are not making the cut and either they get better or they leave. There's something that is very pernicious in the government in Brazil (where I'm from) where in a department there's one person that does all the work while everyone else sits around. You can't fir…
Government work tends to also have structured pay scales that rise based on time worked and less so or not at all on performance. If the end result of working your tail off or doing the bare minimum is the same x% cost of living “raise”, no rational employee would put in any effort.
It tends to be the reason so many Americans are anti-union. They do a lot of good for the average worker but they also carry along a lot of dead weight that can’t easily be shed.
Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to sound soulless but why would you want to invest on the C’s? Unless we have no options I don’t see why so that. I’ve had to deal with people like that and it’s a tar pit.
One thing is that the A's are watching how you treat the C's. They might not have a good gauge of the culture from their own experience because they take care of themselves.
Indeed. And when the C is unmanaged, creating needless work for others (review code that doesn’t work, etc), making a negative contribution to forward progress, then the rest of the As and Bs are looking around wondering why this person is not fired.
Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#47For a B level: > * You did not cause other people unreasonable amounts of work.* I would be careful with this one. As the examples listed after, such as an on-call incident or extra review of code isn’t necessarily on the n00b. Maybe I’m biased being only 4 years into my career but engagement on stuff you did wrong or even points on what you can do better are extremely valuable. From my standpoint, screwing up isn’t…
The article sounds like a company with toxic blame culture. If critical aerospace can be no-blame, software can too. Sure, try not to be useless, but if the company doesn’t have guardrails that’s not on them. If an intern deletes something: why did they have access in the first place? Why wasn’t there a backup?
> You will send out some C signals. That’s inevitable. We all did. Never, never send out the same C signal twice. And make sure the balance of the signals are that you are a B.
This bit is important. It's not great if a new hire nukes production, but it doesn't preclude them from being a B or A.
Additionally being considered a C isn't necessarily a blame game. If an employee nukes production multiple times, they may not be in the right headspace to work at that company, through no fault of their own.
Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#48This makes complete sense in an environment where people transition from noob to senior engineer within the same company. It makes less sense in an era when tenure is better measured in months than years. It makes even less sense in an era of LLMs. One area where it might be relevant is the military. People are more likely to stay for longer (unvalidated assumption) and the same personnel jacket follows them if they…
> It makes less sense in an era when tenure is better measured in months than years.
If a person's tenure in companies is measured in months then they're signalling they're a C by your logic, or is at least raising a red flag to whoever's hiring. I may be showing my age but that sounds wild to me if that's the norm now.
Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#49I have known a lot of people who think they are (the only) As and spend all their time bike shedding and generally dicking around with tooling and griping about patterns that they prevent everyone around them getting anything done.
Re: Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks
#50I work at a place that is actively hiring juniors. While they don’t have an explicit rating system I feel like we unconsciously follow a similar pattern with new coders and it’s unfortunate. Given that older staff generally have a legacy of responsibility they don’t always have the time required to coach people who lack that self-starting spark. The quality of the questions and how much effort they have put in to ans…
How is the place you’re at approaching AI in this context? As a senior I worry about the juniors coming in — Claude can do what I would have previously tasked to a junior. I guess the shape of the junior role just changes.
It has been interesting. The good guys got better with AI. The C grade guys mostly get confused, or follow hallucinations for a lot longer before they realise it’s a dead end. If anything AI seems to make it easier to see who is good and who isn’t.
Ironically on the token use leader boards the C guys are crushing it.
Edit: I was worried about Claude+junior myself but it’s not working out that way. It’s like giving an apprentice access to a full woodworking shop full of tools and expecting fine joinery, but getting a high school spice rack and 2 tons of sawdust