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Grammatical and logical issues aside with, "we only hire the best," once you make it into TrendyCo or BigCo you're faced with the dilemma of Plato's cave. Here

Grammatical and logical issues aside with, "we only hire the best," once you make it into TrendyCo or BigCo you're faced with the dilemma of Plato's cave. Here is a code base written by a group of average people with big egos whose reality is limited. Your perspective as an outsider to the cave are not going to be valued. Even in very open-minded teams I've found that once the way is established people will struggle to keep it that way forever. As a developer, trendy or otherwise, you take a big risk sitting down at the back of that cave and joining in the group.

rpgmaker 11y ago
There really isn't a way to avoid this other than only working in places were you already agree 100% with the way they do things. If you build your own company you will also have your way of doing things that you will impose on everyone working for you and you will not change it because of some new guy. Not significantly, anyways.
- agentultra 11y ago
  There is a way to avoid it but I think software development is unique in that we haven't been able, so far, to establish what the state of the art is. And so it seems like, as you say, every company is in its own cave and the only way to have the freedom to have your own ideas is to start your own cave. It's a little bit backwards in my opinion. Instead of it being commonly accepted that we should be checking mathematical models of our systems we have "senior engineers," debating whether unit tests are a waste of time. We have developers either being trendy or forcing others to pretend they are. And trendy changes in each ecosystem (BigCo vs TrendyCo). Companies can, and should, change. The AWS teams managed to see the formal specifications are a good idea and have been better for it since. You can be sure there were highly experienced senior developers who resisted their introduction with the best arguments they could muster. Even very smart people want to stay in the cave and watch the shadows.
  - rpgmaker 11y ago
    > The AWS teams managed to see the formal specifications are a good idea and have been better for it since. Can you elaborate on that?
    - agentultra 11y ago
      If you can spare an hour, I recommend Leslie Lamport's talk at React San Fran 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCRqE59VXT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCRqE59VXT0 Where he shares some anecdotes from Chris Newcombe about Amazon's adoption of TLA+.
      - rpgmaker 11y ago
        I can't now but eventually. Thanks.

rpgmaker 11y ago

There really isn't a way to avoid this other than only working in places were you already agree 100% with the way they do things. If you build your own company you will also have your way of doing things that you will impose on everyone working for you and you will not change it because of some new guy. Not significantly, anyways.

agentultra 11y ago
There is a way to avoid it but I think software development is unique in that we haven't been able, so far, to establish what the state of the art is. And so it seems like, as you say, every company is in its own cave and the only way to have the freedom to have your own ideas is to start your own cave. It's a little bit backwards in my opinion. Instead of it being commonly accepted that we should be checking mathematical models of our systems we have "senior engineers," debating whether unit tests are a waste of time. We have developers either being trendy or forcing others to pretend they are. And trendy changes in each ecosystem (BigCo vs TrendyCo). Companies can, and should, change. The AWS teams managed to see the formal specifications are a good idea and have been better for it since. You can be sure there were highly experienced senior developers who resisted their introduction with the best arguments they could muster. Even very smart people want to stay in the cave and watch the shadows.
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  > The AWS teams managed to see the formal specifications are a good idea and have been better for it since. Can you elaborate on that?
  - agentultra 11y ago
    If you can spare an hour, I recommend Leslie Lamport's talk at React San Fran 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCRqE59VXT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCRqE59VXT0 Where he shares some anecdotes from Chris Newcombe about Amazon's adoption of TLA+.
    - rpgmaker 11y ago
      I can't now but eventually. Thanks.