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Leonardo da Vinci's application letter
- scandox 11y ago"...shall please Your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility." This is humility? Cool.
- eternalban 11y agoSure, come over Leo and we'll have a day long interview session. Btw, you will be required to carve a statue over the weekend [without pay]. [edit]
- notahacker 11y agoOr "That sounds fantastic Leonardo! As a well funded venture attempting to disrupt the Mediterranean we're always looking for new team members and your personal ambition is far more important than any previous experience. You'll be able to work flexibly from our shiny new office palace, work directly with our fantastic founders and we'll cover your lunch and gondola to work. And you get to take a half day every second Friday. After your three month internship we'll offer you fantastic references, and some of our former interns have been offered full time work at a great below-market salary. Leo... you still there?"
- eternalban 11y agoIt is getting completely ridiculous. What is specially galling is that these days most of us have publicly published works (ala github, etc.) On the other hand, seeing a letter like that reminded me of how James Joyce [?] used to go to Shakespeare and Company [1] and rearrange the display to make sure Ulysses was prominently displayed! [?]: ?!!! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_and_Company_%28bookstore%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_and_Company_%28boo...
- kelvin0 11y agoSo Leonardo, could you please: "Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”."
- markatkinson 11y agoThis almost made me fall off my chair... I literally made a fizzbuzz application in Elixir today 0_0
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- _pmf_ 11y agoBonus points for ridiculing him if he uses tabs instead of spaces.
- dTal 11y agoYou mean, spaces instead of tabs... :)
- diezge 11y agoLeonardo: "Can I use jQuery?"
- xrcltr 11y agoActual Leonardo: "Why do you want this? I have found upon much observation and reflection that those people of stout character who request Fizzbuzzium would be far better served with the presentation of the solution to an alternative problem that more closely describes the situation. Please find it within yourself to return to first principles, so I may remove the original first problem with quickness and zeal that you have not yet seen."
- j45 11y agoMost FizzBuzz test takers are not Leonardo Da Vinci, no matter how hard they may imagine it.
- MarvinYork 11y agoYou need to specialize, Leo. Otherwise you'll never be good at something.
- hathym 11y agoThis one is a real 10x engineer
- kolbe 11y agoDear Leo: have you considered attending Stanford or MIT? You seem like an intelligent candidate, but your lack of academic pedigree would be a real turn off to our VC investors.
- wolfhumble 11y ago"Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be." El Greco (1541-1614) didn't agree with him on that: When he was later asked what he thought about Michelangelo, El Greco replied that "he was a good man, but he did not know how to paint" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco#cite_note-Plaka47-49-24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco#cite_note-Plaka47-49-... Not much of a reverence there! :-) [Edit: Sorry for the mixup Leonardo! :-( Choose to let it stay so your comments don't become orphaned]
- eternalban 11y agoEl Greco was centuries ahead of his time. Love his works.
- thecopy 11y agoWell, this is Leonardo Da Vinci's letter, not Michelangelo's. Interesting nonetheless.
- VLM 11y agoI'm really sorry Michelangelo but we're only looking to hire rock star ninjas with experience painting Last Suppers. That's nice that you paint buildings like that chapel ceiling or whatever, but we need someone with experience in the field who can jump right in and make a dent in the universe this week no need to come up to speed. I also see in your resume you made sculptures and we need someone a little more focused on last supper painting. Thanks for coming in, we appreciate you used 10% of your annual vacation time for this 8 hour long interview even though we decided to reject you before you got here, and maybe in a few years with a little more experience you should re-apply?
- notahacker 11y agoThis application letter in the style of Leonardo from a few years back is pretty special too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086527
- makmanalp 11y agoOkay look, I see a lot of snarky posts here about Leonardo doing Fizzbuzz and Leonardo being in a daylong interview session. Guess what - Leonardo wasn't a superstar back then but he'd worked in Verrocchio's workshop, a workshop that was one of the best in Florence. He learned an immense level of technical skills there. Then he also was a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in Florence. Then he painted the Adoration of the Magi (which was never finished, but whatever). Then he made a silver lyre, which the medici family sent to the Sforzas for a peace accord. So the modern equivalent of this is something like (and I'm making this up clearly) someone who started at a regionally famous company at a young age, worked there for years to cut their teeth, meanwhile was a regular presence at conferences or Meetup groups in the area, who then worked on a company that generated some buzz but didn't succeed ultimately, and then one of their VCs introduced him to another company. So, not the same as a person with no experience to show for getting a daylong interview with fizzbuzz and a take home project. In fact the "interview" probably took days to weeks in that case! edit: And yes, of course I don't think that's a good way to conduct interviews. But it sure as hell wasn't a better or more efficient or more equal opportunity system back then. Progress has happened since then. It just should be happening at a much faster rate now and it's not.
- herval 11y agoI saw a tweet some time ago of the creator and main maintainer of some widely used tool (Cocoapods I think?) bombing in an interview at (Facebook|Google). He didn't pass the whiteboard test. Or maybe how Kent Beck hiring process went at FB: https://www.quora.com/How-was-Kent-Beck-recruited-to-Facebook https://www.quora.com/How-was-Kent-Beck-recruited-to-Faceboo... Edit: first case was Homebrew's creator at google: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 (thanks, livingparadox!)
- livingparadox 11y agoThe creator of homebrew experienced this at Google. Ended up getting hired at apple.
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- rodionos 11y agoAlso, I will make covered vehicles, safe and unassailable, which will penetrate the enemy and their artillery, and there is no host of armed men so great that they would not break through it. And behind these the infantry will be able to follow, quite uninjured and unimpeded. I assume this covers tanks?
- seren 11y agoProbably something like : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_fighting_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_fighting_vehicle
- VLM 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_tower Really the only thing that made defensive walls useful for sieges in that era was the fact no one had any decent portable fireproof siege towers, so most towers ended up burnt down, unless the city under siege literally ran out of things to light on fire and toss into the (wooden) tower. Also see "moat". Defensive troops on the walls were pretty good at tipping towers over with ropes or whatever, too. You'll note like a good engineer he promises all the easy stuff like logs being pretty good at stopping arrows, and doesn't mention the unfixable parts like "it'll burn" or "it'll tip over".
- jld89 11y agoIt seems to me Leonardo that you don't have at least 15 years in any given field. I'm sorry but I'm looking for a senior engineer.
- cvubrugier 11y agoFor those living in or visiting Paris, you can see this application letter (or a replica?) at the Pinacothèque de Paris until the end of the month.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoSounds like a geek who sketches wild ideas; then in his cover letter he fantasizes that he actually knows how to do those things. I hope they took those claims with a grain of salt!
- stared 11y agoI think that it is very alike current CVs/motivation letters. I mean, instead of praising his fine arts accomplishments, he focused on mundane and practical skills (even if dirty), but which are directly useful for his prospective employer. So, more in line of "I am good at Angular, but if there is a need, I can use React", "I have experience in ad optimization and SEO", "I can optimize predictive algorithms for stock prices, so they can have an edge over competitors".
- tmalsburg2 11y agoI agree about the mundane skills but I also have to say that this is a very poor application letter because it only lists baseless claims. A good application letter instead lists tangible accomplishments that substantiate such claims. Ideally, the evidence for these accomplishments is so strong that the claims do not even have to be made explicit.
- Mahn 11y agoTurn back now. There's no sensible discussion in this thread.
- visakanv 11y agoAll the bitterness in Hacker News is spilling out here. I suppose that's probably a good thing.
- j45 11y agoInteresting that Leonardo, had to freelance and consult and invented and innovated on the side just fine. Sure, Leonardo Da Vinci syndrome can come to mind, maybe he was trying to get the innovation out of him as quick as his teeming brain demanded.
- neves 11y agoThe funniest thing was that he got the job... to be a lyre player for Scorza: https://books.google.com.br/books?id=_WyYeJOelPMC&lpg=PT106&ots=Funs0hRxvu&dq=Ludovico%20Sforza%20leonardo%20da%20vinci%20lyre%20player&pg=PT106#v=onepage&q=Ludovico%20Sforza%20leonardo%20da%20vinci%20lyre%20player&f=false https://books.google.com.br/books?id=_WyYeJOelPMC&lpg=PT106&... His engineering talents were ignored!
- noam87 11y agoIs this Hacker News or /r/programming? Was hoping for a more informative discussion on one of my intellectual heroes. To me, Da Vinci is up there in the "alien" category along with Von Neumann... there is no field in which he not only excelled, but formed theories that were centuries ahead of their time. Not only in art and engineering, but in medicine and biology. In his notebooks you can find rudimentary ideas about evolution (in his study of fossils, he notes that different layers have different kinds, and that those at the bottom appear to be the oldest; he then notes that the Earth must be much older than his peers seem to think!). In medicine he noted that the arteries of people who suffer from heart attacks are hardened and thickly coated (another discovery that was not made until the 20th century). There is also misconceptions about whether some of his designs worked. It was common back then (before IP laws) for inventors to insert crucial flaws into the schemes, with codified solutions that only they know, so that only they could build the product. For example, his gliding machine, lacking a tail, will bomb. Unless you are astute enough to notice the pages where he writes down his theories about how birds use their tail to stabilize their flight! Lo and behold, after adding a tail, the glider works: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/leonardo/glider.html http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/leonardo/glider.html The list goes on. If you haven't, I thoroughly recommend reading more about this man. He was not just a great painter and engineer, e was truly a once in a generation mind; and all without formal training -- just his imagination and thought experiments. Perhaps too far ahead of his time... imagine how far we'd be had further pursued his wild ideas! His facsimiles are also available in print, and offer a fascinating insight into a one of a kind mind.
- rcavezza 11y agoThere are hundreds of books on Da Vinci. Is there one in particular you would recommend?
- zw123456 11y agoMy favorite is called "How to think like Leonardo da Vinci" http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Like-Leonardo-Vinci/dp/0440508274 http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Like-Leonardo-Vinci/dp/04405... It also has a companion workbook. Who wouldn't want to think like Leonardo !
- gwern 11y agoI know it's easy to joke about a SV twist, but there's actually a novel, _Radiance_ by Carter Scholz ( http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-radiance http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-radiance ), where da Vinci's letter to Sforz is a big theme, as it encapsulates the troubled relationship of science to the military, which repeats throughout history and especially in Silicon Valley and the national nuclear labs descending from the Manhattan Project. It's bleak, but it's one of my favorite novels.
- edw519 11y agoAaah, feels like a good time for me to recycle an oldie but goodie from #245 here: http://v25media.s3.amazonaws.com/edw519_mod.pdf http://v25media.s3.amazonaws.com/edw519_mod.pdf If it worked for Leonardo da Vinci, maybe it could work for me. The next time I’m looking for a job, I’ll try this: “Most Illustrious Proprietor, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled developers of applications of business, and that the invention and operation of the said programs are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Company, showing your Management my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below. 1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong functions and modules, adapted to be most easily ftp’d, and with them you may pursue, and at any time combine them with others, secure and indestructible by standard mean time to failure of hardware and denial of service, easy and convenient to compile and catalog. Also methods of unzipping and storing the data of the customers. 2. I know how, when a website is besieged, to shard data onto the cloud, and make endless variety of mirrors, and fault tolerant disks and RAIDs, and other machines pertaining to such concerns. 3. If, by reason of the volume of the data, or the structure of the btrees and its indexes, it is impossible, when conducting a search, to avail oneself of sub-second response time, I have methods for benchmarking every process or other function, even if it were interpreted, etc. 4. Again, I have kinds of functions; most convenient and easy to ftp; and with these I can spawn lots of data almost resembling a torrent; and with the download of these cause great terror to the competitor, to his great detriment and confusion. 5. And if the processing should be on the desktop I have apps of many machines most efficient for data entry and reporting; and utilities which will satisfy the needs of the most demanding customers and users and consumers. 6. I have means by secret and tortuous scripts and modules, made without leaving tracks, to generate source code, even if it were needed to run on a client or a server. 7. I will make secure firewalls, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the hackers with their utilities, there is no body of crackers so great but they would break them. And behind these, software could run quite unhurt and without any hindrance. 8. In case of need I will make big properties, methods, and collections and useful forms, out of the common type. 9. Where the operation of compiling might fail, I would contrive scripts, functions, routines, and other parameter driven processes of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of data entry, reporting, and storage. 10. In times of low revenue I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in maintenance and the refactoring of code public and private; and in guiding data from one warehouse to another. 11. I can carry out code in Javascript, PHP, or C, and also I can do in network administration whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may. Again, the intranet app may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of all your customers of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Google. And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your data center, or in whatever place may please your Businessperson - to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.”
- taytus 11y ago"I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be." I love this line.
- peterjmag 11y agoCracks me up that he mentions painting as little more than a side note. "Oh yeah and I paint sometimes too." This from the guy who went on to create what is arguably the most famous painting in the history of art.
- talmand 11y agoI'd like an explanation of how he could demonstrate #5, silent construction of tunnels, in the guy's park or area of choice in a reasonable fashion. I would think a good challenge on that is to ask he demonstrate by constructing a tunnel in secret that opens up in my current enemy's fortification. Of course, Leonardo could respond with "I don't tunnel for free!"