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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

#401

Post by coldtea »

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…

>But today I was told straight up that my resume wasn't conventional enough, that it was too well-rounded. After quite a few messages back and forth, I'm not even sure if they even looked at my portfolio. They told me there was no money for me, because their funders were looking for someone more professional.

Assuming your skillset is good, run, don't walk, away from those idiots.

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

#402

Post by emodendroket »

Terr_ wrote: post #381
legitster wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've definitely been part of a hiring process where "over-experienced" gets thrown around a lot. Here's stuff that comes up all the time: - The main and probably unfair assumption that they will want more money and special treatment for the same amount of grunt work. - They will not respect the (majority 20-something) peers and will try to subtly enforce seniority (again, unfair). - They will refuse to do grunt work…

> If they were truly experienced, they would be getting poached or going through a headhunter. Huh, is that very common? As someone with 10 years of experience but very little job-hopping (perhaps to my detriment) I always had this feeling that recruiters were a bit like dodgy car salesman, and that a direct application would be better.

There are advantages to the recruiter too (for instance, it's easier to h ave frank conversations about questions like "how much will they pay?" very early in the process) and some recruiters are better than others. Of course your incentives aren't quite aligned and you need to be aware of it, but it's not necessarily a bad move to try using one.

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

#403

Post by emodendroket »

badpun wrote: post #199
ryandrake wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech does not pay for experience. A new grad's compensation is often equal and some times greater than someone who's been in the trenches for 20 years. I don't know any other profession with this absurd inversion. And with a few notable exceptions, the idea that someone with 5 years of experience is Senior-anything is ridiculous. I remember myself at 5 years out, I didn't know shit compared to today. Yet, adjusted fo…

My impression is that coding requires more energy and enthusiasm (so, in other words, internal motivation) to do a good job than many other professions. Hence 5 year exp "senior" can do a better job than a jaded and complacent 15 year exp one.

I don't know about that. Surely expertise can make up for "energy and enthusiasm" (even after decades nobody knows everything about programming). It sounds a little like a post hoc justification of age discrimination.

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

#404

Post by coldtea »

reboog711 wrote: post #397
eropple wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've heard of "be a multiplier, not an adder", right? My contention is that many good developers can be multipliers across very large portions of an engineering organization when given the chance. Dysfunction does seem to be the natural state of any business, and engineering groups are no exception; technical and social resources capable of and empowered to tackle cross-cutting concerns are that chance I'm describi…

I have not heard of 'be a multiplier, not an adder' Can you elaborate?

Be one that makes changes that make a team perform 2x - 10x - Nx better, not someone who adds a constant contribution to the team.

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

#405

Post by slv77 »

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?

Most employees look to own parts of larger projects where the returns are modest and a low potential failure rate.

Most manager look to own projects that may return a modest multiple of their budget with a 80% chance of success.

There are few executives that will target an opportunity that is 100x their budget with a 20% chance of success.

To the company the third group of employees are much more valuable than the first and second because the returns on the winners vastly exceed the cost of the losers. Individuals however are cognitively biased against personal failure so it is hard to find individuals that will swing for the fences (and who can also convince people in group 1 and 2 to work for them).

Good companies create frameworks where it is okay to fail (i.e. doesn’t impact your job, advancement prospects, etc). Unfortunately that is difficult and it generally is easier to hire sociopaths (no joke).

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

#406

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

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…

Late reply, but I think there's a second harm to throwing out generalists in addition to what you outline:

Specialists aren't as good as generalists at integrating the work of specialists across domains (almost by definition). A lack of generalists can then lead to a situation where specialists are all making locally good moves, but the overall direction is negative -- something akin to Simpson's paradox (though, in the other direction).

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

#407

Post by rvern »

Wh1zz wrote: post #351
toasterlovin wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Source on that first claim?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)#Job_p...

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

#408

Post by posterboy »

dsp1234 wrote: post #146
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to write real proofs (tho I didn't fail completely if it wasn't free of errors) for my U.S. math undergrad degree.

Did those proofs have to be novel, or were the proofs of already known concepts?

there is so much room for questions, it's quicker to write the proof than to search an answer. And a readily found answer would, for undergrad, less likely be in proof form, or too distinct for specific topics later on. And the instructor might become suspicious and interogate you, in which case, if the material helped you to understand, that's the point.

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

#409

Post by Retric »

eropple wrote: post #332
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.

I have shipped React and React Native apps. I've built nontrivial open source infrastructure/devops tools that are used at Companies You Have Heard Of. I've done backend stuff for NASDAQ-listed companies. I'm not a web or mobile developer. I'm not a "devops engineer", and I'm not a "backend engineer." I'm a problem-solver. But to many (most?) companies, this means that I need to be classfied into a track . I need to…

Assembly lines beat generalists. As companies grow they can exploit this to gain increasing efficiency with minimal effort. So, either work for small companies, or be the front line manager who picks up whatever slack is missing to keep things on track.

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

#410

Post by Joeri »

If you are attempting to hire for an engineering position, greater than 50% of people who apply for the job and whose resume you select as "facially plausible" will be entirely unable to program, at all. The search term for learning more about this is FizzBuzz.

So true, and something that stumped me when I sat at the other side of a hiring table myself. I couldn't figure out why until it was pointed out to me that people who are good at their job are not looking for work, they already have a job. In fact, the really good people often don't apply for jobs at all, but instead they get convinced to switch employers. By contrast, the people who can't program are on the job market all the time. So, the job market is heavily skewed towards people not good enough to hire.

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