People get promoted for making their boss look good.
P.S. I know this sounds obvious, but I was a slow learner.
Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
461–470 of 534 posts
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
"That does sound like something nice to have. However, recreating Google Sheets is a substantial undertaking. First, we need to evaluate the business case for duplicating something that already exists to ensure that there is a net benefit in doing so. Second, we need to determine if the business has sufficient capital to see the project through."
There is a difference between being smart and acting smart.
I think that's exactly the point being made. __Acting__ smart gets you paid, not being smart, and that's like, not ideal.
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#463I had an interview question. What would you do if two different people were emailing a spreadsheet back and forth to track something? I said I’d move them to google sheets. There was about five minutes of awkwardness after that as I was interviewing for software developer. I was supposed to talk about what kind of tool I’d build. I found it kind of eye opening but I’m still not sure what the right lesson to learn was…
the lesson to learn is - don't let the conversation die off. think of all the weird scenarios that wouldn't make google sheets work.
e.g. no access to internet (or at least VPN access via completely locked down devices) / internal email server / only open source etc.
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "now what if we wanted to build it in-house?" "Well I would probably go home and work on my resume because that's a fool's errand." I hate going to work and reinventing wheels all day because the company I work for thinks it's so special that every business function needs a 100% tailored solution to solved problems. I much prefer working somewhere that's able to tailor business processes to conform to existing stan…
I’ve interviewed a few hundred people. Probably approaching a thousand, if not already. An interview is a scenario, and if you aren’t willing to engage in the scenario that we all agreed to partake in, that’s a huge warning sign that you’re going to be difficult later down the line. The point of the question is to have something remotely understandable for both sides to talk about, that’s it.
I also feel it's very easy for a good interviewer to bring the conversation back to the desired scenario.
Anything from "imagine we are in a parallel universe where Google Sheets has not been invented yet" to "how would you design a google sheets competitor" would do the trick.
Source: interviewed hundreds, incl FAANG.
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
but also maybe its a green flag in that this employee might see the wood for the trees and save the company a lot of money later down the line. In my experience, a lot of engineers can waste a lot of time dicking around re-inventing wheels and whatnot. While you consider it a huge warning sign, have you ever employed someone who would answer that way or are you assuming that you're not capable of making hiring mistak…
> While you consider it a huge warning sign, have you ever employed someone who would answer that way or are you assuming that you're not capable of making hiring mistakes? I can't help but think this "huge warning sign" might simply be a cognative bias where the interviewer is misdirecting their frustration in the poor design of their own process at the candidate Yes, I did. More than once. I always regretted it. Su…
> Yes, I did. More than once. I always regretted it.
Fair.
> I disagree - refusing to engage with the interview because you don’t like the question is perfectly valid to do, but don’t expect me to want to work with you over it. We’ve only got an hour, maximum, so any scenario we come up with is going to be contrived and simplified - if you can’t accept that then I’m going to make my decision based on that.
Sure but lets not forget the other perspective. Candidates have to interview for a cumulative many hours over the course of a job hunt, only to have many interviewers batter them with an array of 1337code, pop quizes or contrived examples, none of which reflect the day to day work of the position they will fill. From their perspective their answer could well be a good one, albeit I agree that having some level of willingness to engage in the theatre is a positive sign.
In an auto-interview I recently did, I was given extremely limited time to "refactor" a bunch of code that was clearly broken. I chose not to refactor and instead fix the brokeness of the code, however I entirely expect to fail the interview because I fixed the problems instead of removing a couple of obviously duplicated code blocks. I can see why I would fail by not "following orders" but their async code was broken and the awful exception handling botched all their telemetry. From a "big picture" perspective I did do the right thing but it might be the case they're too stupid to know that I was doing the right thing (they're a multi-language company, so I assume they're less good at the language I specialise in).
Personally I think due to lack of industry organisation around certification or any sort of guild or union, we have a seriously difficult problem around hiring across the industry. In response to the extremely challenging task of vetting programmers I feel like orgs are simply fishing for reasons to disqualify candidates, as a reaction to this problem.
The rare positive experiences I've had interviewing were Amazon, who act like they want you to succeeed instead of fail or orgs that just half-ass it with low bar challenges, who seemingly accept that they're not capable of perfectly vetting a candidate.
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#466Sure they do. You just need to spell it out in business terms, not tech terms: "Reduced incidents by 80%", "Decreased costs by 40%", "Increased performance by 33% while decreasing server footprint by 25%" Simplicity for its own sake is not valued. The results of simplicity are highly valued.
You can't measure the impact of not creating a steaming pile of complexity.
The impact is that you get to go solve another problem. This absolutely does show up in a good performance review.
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't measure the impact of not creating a steaming pile of complexity.
One of my the papers I share around a lot is "Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2002)"[1]. I like it because it's not purely about software so the examples resonate better with some exec level people in other teams I work with. [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1167285
Yes, this is the real cause, and the OP explanation is just a symptom of that.
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#468[flagged]
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
sure but if its not a privately held business then using gsuite is better for the shareholders. Ultimately its the bosses choice, but for the board to fire them its worth knowing they were aware of being able to use gsuite instead of pissing away resource on a needless project.
The question isn’t should we use gsuite, it’s can we talk about a tech problem. If you don’t understand that you’ve failed the interview.
and if you don't understand my position then you've failed to interview. Some people just seek reasons to disqualify candidates and I think that's a pretty basic approach to interviewing. Remember, we all have a cognitive bias to hire ourselves and part of improving interviewing process is about trying to mitigate that by creating an environment where the interviewee can show the best of themselves, which may not necessarily reflect our own strengths. This is why pop quiz questions are kinda crap and while 1337code is better, its still kinda crap
Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve interviewed a few hundred people. Probably approaching a thousand, if not already. An interview is a scenario, and if you aren’t willing to engage in the scenario that we all agreed to partake in, that’s a huge warning sign that you’re going to be difficult later down the line. The point of the question is to have something remotely understandable for both sides to talk about, that’s it.
I'd call it an interviewer failure, not an interviewee failure. I absolutely want people I hire to be "difficult" when the moment calls for it. If the scenario is one where the right business/user choice is "let them keep using Google Sheets", then the answer I want is "Google Sheets seems fine to me", no matter what people with more power start out wanting. Too many developers have been encouraged to be minions, not…
> I absolutely want people I hire to be "difficult" when the moment calls for it.
<3. What do you think makes the difference here in orgs that respect this and those that simply try to hire yesmen?