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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

#51

Post by toasterlovin »

drewrv wrote: post #17
wnoise wrote: post #3

> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.

I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

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

#52

Post by alexbecker »

throwawayjava wrote: post #12
Cyberdog wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet many job listings for programmers demand you have a CS degree…

Because for many employers "ability to program" is a minimum requirement, not the full job description.

For far more employers, "ability to program" is something they have no idea how to filter for in a pile of resumes, but "CS degree" seems like it might be a usable proxy.

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

#53

Post by zbentley »

> 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: companies, individuals' growth, and the advancement of the state of the art.

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

#54

Post by tptacek »

mrkurt wrote: post #46
tptacek wrote: post #40

Especially after reading the comments on this thread, I'm really not sure HN is a good venue for discussing tweet streams. I think if Patrick wanted to write something that would spark a discussion on HN, he'd have written a blog post.

Are you sure HN is a good venue for discussing anything?

No, that's a fair point.

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

#55

Post by Jemaclus »

throwawayjava wrote: post #34
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?

I'm also confused. What's a "mod a l employee"?

I concur with jpm_sd, he's referring to the most common employee (the "mode" of the set).

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

#56

Post by tptacek »

jstanley wrote: post #45
tptacek wrote: post #40

Especially after reading the comments on this thread, I'm really not sure HN is a good venue for discussing tweet streams. I think if Patrick wanted to write something that would spark a discussion on HN, he'd have written a blog post.

I for one had no idea this was not a blog post.

That's definitely a part of the problem.

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

#57

Post by maxerickson »

duderific wrote: post #48
throwawayjava wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also confused. What's a "mod a l employee"?

I believe it's a typo, should be "model" employee.

No, it's referring to the statistical mode, the most frequent occurrence in a set, "typical" would be a reasonable synonym there.

It's a roundaboot way of saying those qualities rarely all come together.

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

#59

Post by jimktrains2 »

bambax wrote: post #39

> Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. This is oft repeated, but not always true. Take the Nazis (bear with me). The Nazis had the best execution ever . They almost drowned the whole British army, which had previously conquered the world. While fighting battles all over Europe and being one of the most bombarded country in history, they continued to produce tanks, planes, submarines, oper…

Or they lost the war because of bad execution. They had feifdom fights in the upper ranks and Hitler wasn't able to have anyone tell him he had bad ideas (e.g. war on two fronts and locking tanks in Paris instead of letting them be commanded as needed during d-day (which again came down to infighting)).

Germany was also being worn thin on supplies. It's not as if they were in perfect shape minus allied bombings.

Also, the Nazi ideals weren't terrible in the way a business idea was terrible. Many people bought into it.

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

#60

Post by shostack »

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 outside knowledge is equally respected for the deeper context and data behind it.

Unfortunately, this change often means generalists lose jobs in favor of specialists as a company grows if there isn't a good place for them, or if they don't rise to management. In fact, even early managers can be displaced by outside managers who come in with more management experience. And this is not inherently a bad thing for the company (while it may be for the employee getting bumped). The people that take a company from point A to point B are rarely the same people that take it from point B to point C.

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