4 ms·

It's hard to find a brilliant hacker. But it's equally hard to find a brilliant marketing guy, a brilliant sales guy or a brilliant CEO. While I don't disagree

by mixmax 19y ago

It's hard to find a brilliant hacker. But it's equally hard to find a brilliant marketing guy, a brilliant sales guy or a brilliant CEO. While I don't disagree with the point of the post I think that many hackers should step back and look at how many great marketing people, CEO's etc. they know. The actual programming part is only a small part of starting a company, but many hackers seem to think it is all they need because hacking something together happens to be the first step to creating a great company. The key insight is that no great company was made by only one guy. It takes both great hackers, great marketing people, great CEO's and great sales people. Hell, maybe you even need a great janitor... So start showing some respect for each other instead of haggling over who needs who.

webframp 19y ago
traditionally the hackers have been the most undervalued in the whole equation.
- mixmax 19y ago
  Yes they have, probably because hackers are the only ones in the equation who don't need to be good at selling, bullshitting and staking out territory. Hackers should try and become better at selling themselves and knowing their worth. This, however, is an art - selling yourself well is a very subtle and hard thing to get right. Underdo it and you won't get results. Overdo it and you'll sound like a pretentious asshole.
- kingkongrevenge 19y ago
  Philip Greenspun wrote convincingly about how programmers are under valued because they fail to treat programming as a proper profession. They don't dress and otherwise present themselves professionally. They fail to interface professionally with customers and analysts as a doctor or lawyer would. Programmers themselves tend to demand a management style that treats them as a cog in the machine, where they are fed detailed requirements and produce output for others to deal with. The nature of programming work is not so far removed from what a corporate lawyer or financial analyst does. Yet programmers have a much different public image. I think it's fair to say programming attracts certain idiosyncratic personalities that affect the general perception of the work. On the same theme as the grandparent post, don't undervalue the soft touch. There are people who bring to the table little more than that they're nice and likeable. I've seen such people in analyst roles responsible for retaining or creating substantial business.
  - mixmax 19y ago
    Very true - my experience is that "the soft touch" that you so eloquently call it is far more important than people generally think. If people care about what they are doing and come to work happy and ready they will produce much better work.
  - chaostheory 19y ago
    "The nature of programming work is not so far removed from what a corporate lawyer or financial analyst does. Yet programmers have a much different public image" Unfortunately I think this also has to do with the way Western culture views the foundation of programming (math, science, ...). Unlike in say Asia, math and science are looked down upon by main stream culture; since they are considered "nerdy". Maybe that's why we are on our way to producing a lot more lawyers than programmers and engineers (at least for our part of the world)...
  - azanar 19y ago
    This concept of professionalism depends very much on who you ask. Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, the duo behind Peopleware, might suggest that the problem isn't with the behavior of the programmers, but rather with the definition of a proper professional, and by extension the proper profession. I also think your claim of what programmers want is hasty; my experience, albeit somewhat limited, suggests that there are programmers who fill any spot on the scale between autonomy and cog. For that matter, here's a link to the essay by Philip Greenspun: http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-for-software-engineers http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-.... From what I gathered from the article, you're misrepresenting him. His qualifications are much more about giving back to the community and actually giving a damn that it is about aesthetics. Perhaps I didn't find the essay you're referencing? Finally, I don't think you're metaphor using the corporate lawyer or financial analyst is accurate. The corporate lawyer, especially, has far more public exposure than does a programmer, and maintains his image as much or more for the company's sake than his own.
    - kingkongrevenge 19y ago
      Different piece. The one I'm referring to focuses specifically on his experiences with employing programmers at arsdigita.
jmtulloss 19y ago
Sure I need a brilliant CEO, brilliant marketing guy, etc, etc. But first I need a great product. I'm going to make that, not the other guys.
- tom_rath 19y ago
  You wouldn't start coding something before you'd fleshed out a design, right? So why would you start designing something before you identified the market for it? Marketing is the social component of design, and you need brilliant marketing before you can create that brilliant product.
  - cstejerean 19y ago
    Not start coding before you fleshed out the design? Not design until you've identified a market? Sounds like a recipe for never getting anything done. That might be the proper way to tackle things when you have a big upfront costs, but generally for software you can just start coding on things you find useful and interesting. If others are interested, great, you've got a company. If not you just have a useful product and then you can move onto something else.
    - tom_rath 19y ago
      How can you create a useful product if you haven't identified the use?
      - chaostheory 19y ago
        luck in combination with the Max Strategy (continually trying different things all the time): a lot of products did not identify their use before hand, or their real use was discovered accidentally after they were made. post it notes - started as a failed adhesive. a coworker found that it worked well using it with paper and a gospel hymn book snood - (a very popular puzzle bobble variant) the programmer made it because he was bored in grad school linux - started as a hobby by a bored phd candidate silly putty - a failed rubber substitute designed for WWII use the list goes on...
Prrometheus 19y ago
“Founders at Work” is an interesting book because you realize that there is no One Right Way to make a successful startup, not even the Paul Graham way! Some are started by hackers only, others include capable business people who were friends of the founding hackers. Some sold a product from the get go and others just went for eye-share. There are many additional degrees of freedom. The needs of your startup will vary based on your business model. Smart, motivated people have a way of being useful, regardless of their education.
- h34t 19y ago
  The Prize by Daniel Yergin is another great book that totally demolished all assumptions I'd had of what a "successful businessperson" looked like. It's a history of the oil industry, and I was riveted by how colorful and different the various major personalities were.
tptacek 19y ago
What's more true is that pairwise, no two of these roles really understand each other.
- mixmax 19y ago
  People that understand and appreciate all sides of the equation are worth their weight in gold - unfortunately they are also very hard to find.
  - notauser 19y ago
    Current US hiring practices don't help. Job descriptions are well specified and exactly followed. That can be good, but it means you get what you ask for instead of something great but unknown. Over here in the UK I see a little more flexibility in hiring good people and (finding somewhere to put them|letting them work out what to do). Like everything it has good and bad points, not the least of which is that you really only need so many people who can do everything.
notauser 19y ago
I wonder which is really harder, becoming a good enough coder, or becoming a good enough $specialty. Computers are, lets face it, logical things. How much programming skill do you _really_ need to build a prototype? The ability to logically think through a problem, the ability to decompose it into small enough chunks, and then to make those chunks work. Sure, it won't be pretty or elegant or scale if you suck at data structures and algorithms, but it doesn't _need_ to be pretty and elegant to get through the prototype stage. Heck some major sites are ugly, inelegant, and scale like a man climbing a wet glass wall. Fortunately computers are viewed as 'super hard' (genuine quote) by the general population... for now. If that changes, by virtue of people being introduced to start-simple-get-complex coding (eg excel macros, flash) or easier creation tools being developed, geeks who bang out simple web apps could be much less competitive as startup founders. That's not to say they won't be valued - someone will need to clean up the huge pile of steaming junk thrown out by Dreamweaver 6. And there will still be genuinely hard problems to solve... which is one reason why I'm basing my startup on a problem set that requires efficient graph coloring and traversal :)
Bluem00 19y ago
Great point. Your comment reminds me of a story we had here about a week ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136087 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136087

by mixmax 19y ago

webframp 19y ago

traditionally the hackers have been the most undervalued in the whole equation.

mixmax 19y ago
Yes they have, probably because hackers are the only ones in the equation who don't need to be good at selling, bullshitting and staking out territory. Hackers should try and become better at selling themselves and knowing their worth. This, however, is an art - selling yourself well is a very subtle and hard thing to get right. Underdo it and you won't get results. Overdo it and you'll sound like a pretentious asshole.
kingkongrevenge 19y ago
Philip Greenspun wrote convincingly about how programmers are under valued because they fail to treat programming as a proper profession. They don't dress and otherwise present themselves professionally. They fail to interface professionally with customers and analysts as a doctor or lawyer would. Programmers themselves tend to demand a management style that treats them as a cog in the machine, where they are fed detailed requirements and produce output for others to deal with. The nature of programming work is not so far removed from what a corporate lawyer or financial analyst does. Yet programmers have a much different public image. I think it's fair to say programming attracts certain idiosyncratic personalities that affect the general perception of the work. On the same theme as the grandparent post, don't undervalue the soft touch. There are people who bring to the table little more than that they're nice and likeable. I've seen such people in analyst roles responsible for retaining or creating substantial business.
- mixmax 19y ago
  Very true - my experience is that "the soft touch" that you so eloquently call it is far more important than people generally think. If people care about what they are doing and come to work happy and ready they will produce much better work.
- chaostheory 19y ago
  "The nature of programming work is not so far removed from what a corporate lawyer or financial analyst does. Yet programmers have a much different public image" Unfortunately I think this also has to do with the way Western culture views the foundation of programming (math, science, ...). Unlike in say Asia, math and science are looked down upon by main stream culture; since they are considered "nerdy". Maybe that's why we are on our way to producing a lot more lawyers than programmers and engineers (at least for our part of the world)...
- azanar 19y ago
  This concept of professionalism depends very much on who you ask. Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, the duo behind Peopleware, might suggest that the problem isn't with the behavior of the programmers, but rather with the definition of a proper professional, and by extension the proper profession. I also think your claim of what programmers want is hasty; my experience, albeit somewhat limited, suggests that there are programmers who fill any spot on the scale between autonomy and cog. For that matter, here's a link to the essay by Philip Greenspun: http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-for-software-engineers http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-.... From what I gathered from the article, you're misrepresenting him. His qualifications are much more about giving back to the community and actually giving a damn that it is about aesthetics. Perhaps I didn't find the essay you're referencing? Finally, I don't think you're metaphor using the corporate lawyer or financial analyst is accurate. The corporate lawyer, especially, has far more public exposure than does a programmer, and maintains his image as much or more for the company's sake than his own.
  - kingkongrevenge 19y ago
    Different piece. The one I'm referring to focuses specifically on his experiences with employing programmers at arsdigita.

jmtulloss 19y ago

Sure I need a brilliant CEO, brilliant marketing guy, etc, etc. But first I need a great product. I'm going to make that, not the other guys.

tom_rath 19y ago
You wouldn't start coding something before you'd fleshed out a design, right? So why would you start designing something before you identified the market for it? Marketing is the social component of design, and you need brilliant marketing before you can create that brilliant product.
- cstejerean 19y ago
  Not start coding before you fleshed out the design? Not design until you've identified a market? Sounds like a recipe for never getting anything done. That might be the proper way to tackle things when you have a big upfront costs, but generally for software you can just start coding on things you find useful and interesting. If others are interested, great, you've got a company. If not you just have a useful product and then you can move onto something else.
  - tom_rath 19y ago
    How can you create a useful product if you haven't identified the use?
    - chaostheory 19y ago
      luck in combination with the Max Strategy (continually trying different things all the time): a lot of products did not identify their use before hand, or their real use was discovered accidentally after they were made. post it notes - started as a failed adhesive. a coworker found that it worked well using it with paper and a gospel hymn book snood - (a very popular puzzle bobble variant) the programmer made it because he was bored in grad school linux - started as a hobby by a bored phd candidate silly putty - a failed rubber substitute designed for WWII use the list goes on...

Prrometheus 19y ago

“Founders at Work” is an interesting book because you realize that there is no One Right Way to make a successful startup, not even the Paul Graham way! Some are started by hackers only, others include capable business people who were friends of the founding hackers. Some sold a product from the get go and others just went for eye-share. There are many additional degrees of freedom. The needs of your startup will vary based on your business model. Smart, motivated people have a way of being useful, regardless of their education.

h34t 19y ago
The Prize by Daniel Yergin is another great book that totally demolished all assumptions I'd had of what a "successful businessperson" looked like. It's a history of the oil industry, and I was riveted by how colorful and different the various major personalities were.

tptacek 19y ago

What's more true is that pairwise, no two of these roles really understand each other.

mixmax 19y ago
People that understand and appreciate all sides of the equation are worth their weight in gold - unfortunately they are also very hard to find.
- notauser 19y ago
  Current US hiring practices don't help. Job descriptions are well specified and exactly followed. That can be good, but it means you get what you ask for instead of something great but unknown. Over here in the UK I see a little more flexibility in hiring good people and (finding somewhere to put them|letting them work out what to do). Like everything it has good and bad points, not the least of which is that you really only need so many people who can do everything.

notauser 19y ago

I wonder which is really harder, becoming a good enough coder, or becoming a good enough $specialty. Computers are, lets face it, logical things. How much programming skill do you _really_ need to build a prototype? The ability to logically think through a problem, the ability to decompose it into small enough chunks, and then to make those chunks work. Sure, it won't be pretty or elegant or scale if you suck at data structures and algorithms, but it doesn't _need_ to be pretty and elegant to get through the prototype stage. Heck some major sites are ugly, inelegant, and scale like a man climbing a wet glass wall. Fortunately computers are viewed as 'super hard' (genuine quote) by the general population... for now. If that changes, by virtue of people being introduced to start-simple-get-complex coding (eg excel macros, flash) or easier creation tools being developed, geeks who bang out simple web apps could be much less competitive as startup founders. That's not to say they won't be valued - someone will need to clean up the huge pile of steaming junk thrown out by Dreamweaver 6. And there will still be genuinely hard problems to solve... which is one reason why I'm basing my startup on a problem set that requires efficient graph coloring and traversal :)

Bluem00 19y ago

Great point. Your comment reminds me of a story we had here about a week ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136087 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136087