6 ms·

Choose boring employees

58 points by marvel_boy 9y ago

milesokeefe 9y ago
Title should read "employees".
- iffycan 9y ago
  Though the typo'd version probably has some merit, too.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- sgroppino 9y ago
  In the article it's employees but typo in HN headline
- sctb 9y ago
  Thank you, updated.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
payne92 9y ago
TL;DR Don't chase the latest tech stack to attract developers. Hot today, dated next year. "Access to developer talent" is a reasonable factor in selecting a tech stack (e.g. there's a reason few use COBOL, etc.) But it's one of MANY factors.
- Kaedon 9y ago
  For whom do you imagine this is tl;dr? The article itself is quite short.
jonbarker 9y ago
If boring == profitable, sign me up!
- gtt 9y ago
  Sadly, usually boring is just boring.
  - jonbarker 9y ago
    One thing I've noticed is that companies will use cool languages as a recruiting tactic. Then you get in the door and see it's all PHP and one team wrote one Clojure script. (Not picking on PHP here).
StavrosK 9y ago
This article is three lines long. What's next for the front page? Tweets?
- ISL 9y ago
  Here's a probable first-page tweet from 1513 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045581
- prawn 9y ago
  Why not? I've seen a number of tweets make it to the HN front page. Also, when many come here for the comments, or use an article about topic X purely as an excuse to discuss that topic in general (or see what their peers think), does the length of the source article matter much?
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    > when many come here for the comments, [..] does the length of the source article matter much? Fair point, I guess it doesn't.
- schoen 9y ago
  A tweet that reached top story within the past two days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15160149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15160149
nulagrithom 9y ago
Ugh, I hate this sentiment. "Technology moves too fast so don't bother trying to keep up!" No... It's about balance... We're looking for a Synon 2/E expert right now. It's going about as well as you'd expect.
- whipoodle 9y ago
  Sounds boring, so let me guess: you're overwhelmed with candidates and the project is a resounding success. You've grown weary of receiving bonus checks as testament to the company's dullness.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Those experts have been able to write their own tickets for decades so I'm not surprised it's hard to find anyone. First pro tech job was at a small (8000 customer) ISP back in the 90s and our sysadmin was an AS/400 master. He'd show up once or twice a month, mostly just to check on things. I think he made more from that company than the owner ever did.
chrisco255 9y ago
Tech choices matter. The industry evolves and all of this experimentation in languages, frameworks, tooling, and libraries has led to real productivity gains. 10X developers may be rare...but I don't think it's so rare to see 10X productivity gains when it comes to tech stacks. For example, a company who runs their own servers manually can see dramatic improvements in productivity and agility if they move to a newer tech stack and run on AWS or Heroku or some PaaS as an alternative. Using JQuery may be the tried, true, and mature front end stack, but I've been able to rewrite front-end code in a different framework with less than 1/5th of the code to maintain. To summarize, I think you should hire energized, motivated, continually educated employees that stay at the top of their game...not boring ones.
- kafkaesq 9y ago
  I think you should hire energized, motivated, continually educated employees that stay at the top of their game...not boring ones. I think the point of the article, which was rather subtle actually, is that "top of their game" is best defined in more general terms than simply "skilled in the top random webby crap from from the last 18 months". I've been able to rewrite front-end code in a different framework with less than 1/5th of the code to maintain. And about 10,000x as many dependencies, not to mention (if not exactly a shit-ton) a considerable degree of implied bulk in the form of new abstractions ("transpiling") and random contextual crap (packaging, etc) to maintain as well. And the implied path-dependence (for the sake of temporary benefit that comes from adding X, Y and Z to the project... it's going to be that much harder to refactor and shift to something else). All for the sake of a simple autocomplete form, and maybe a popup or two. Which is exactly what's so cool about "boring" developers -- they see not just the positive tradeoffs in using the shiny stuff ("1/5 as much code") but the negative tradeoffs ("So you mean that hot new AngularJS thing everyone was yelping about 3 years ago... suddenly isn't looking so hot anymore? How come?") as well.
  - chrisco255 9y ago
    The app I'm mentioning was pre-Webpack days, like 4-5 years ago. Just using KnockoutJS...which has no dependencies. It made me realize that tools can dramatically impact my output as a developer. Dependencies can sometimes be a pain in the ass to manage...but they are a huge net positive for productivity. When the choice is between downloading a battle-tested autocomplete package written and maintained by someone like PayPal (https://github.com/paypal/downshift https://github.com/paypal/downshift) and rolling your own thing...it's a no brainer. You use the battle tested lib unless you have a very good reason to roll your own thing. Some tools fade, some tools stand the test of time. AngularJS has been deprecated even by its own creators (who built a shiny new framework with the same name)...so that's a bad example.
CorvusCrypto 9y ago
> Next year, your company will be a year more mature. Yep and we will be looking at the cutting edge always to see if there are things we can use to improve our stack/development process. > Your product will be a year more developed. Well that is how software development works. > You will have a year more customers. Yes and we will therefore have at least some stable income too! > You’ll have a year more tech debt to pay off. Yes, but because we have kept up to date in trends and technology the debt is significantly less than one might expect. Plus we aren't laser beams (i.e. very narrowly focused) which means we are able to manage three primary goals: fix bugs, improve/add features, and maintain/improve our stack. This post was not great imo.
dwaltrip 9y ago
What the author meant to say is "Don't hire people who pursue new tech solely for the sake of newness". It's not about being boring. It's about being pragmatic and focused on actually executing.
colbyh 9y ago
Unpopular opinion, but I actually think this is very good advice in certain situations. If your startup is using a technology tangentially related to your core product it can totally make sense to use "boring" tech. The simplest version would be something along the lines of - building a hardware startup? It probably doesn't make sense to build your company's ecomm site on top of React/Redux/etc. Rails works. Shopify works. They are boring options but they get the job done and get out of the way. Same company needs a blog? Don't roll your own, just find someone to manage a wordpress installation and be done with it. Now that might very not be the case if your hardware has a substantial online component of course, but if your core product value is tied up in selling a hard good that doesn't need an app or a management interface of any kind then it doesn't really make sense to spend extra resources on a really cool website.
jeffdo 9y ago
I'd rather hire an 'interesting' developer who wants to build and consistently upgrade a product with the latest tech then someone who believes it too difficult. Who says your stack cant change over time, ever heard of agile development?
abhi3 9y ago
Reading the title I thought the article was going to talk about how not to hire for culture fit nonsense like playing foosball or ability to down a keg but instead it talks about hiring people who don't care enough to keep up with tech advancements.
Bretts89 9y ago
I believe in hiring the very best employees that fit the culture of your company. If your culture is a boring one, then hire the best employees which would fit well into a boring culture. If your company culture is vibrant and outgoing, then hire the very best employees that will thrive in a vibrant, outgoing culture.
cannonedhamster 9y ago
The flip side of this is that you have "boring" companies and employees who are reluctant to change even if it would make a demonstrable improvement. Doing things because you've always done them this way is just as much of a trap, and I'd suspect far more common outside of the startup realm.
CM30 9y ago
I think the more important thing here isn't to choose 'boring' employees or tech stacks, but to choose what's actually needed for your situation. If your site is a fancy web app where customers need to say, design their own website in the browser with a visual editor complete with Photoshop style image editing and what not, choose a tech stack that supports that as well as employees skilled with said stack. That's a good use case for the latest Javascript framework you've been working with recently, along with cloud hosting on AWS or the likes. On the other hand, if your site's just a content site (like say, a news blog or a basic forum), you really don't need all that fancy technology setup for it. Just create a nice basic frontend with HTML and CSS (with the odd line or two of Javascript where necessary), then use whatever your preferred scripting language and database is on the backend. Setting up a huge framework on AWS for this is like using a nuke to crack an egg. And if you're looking for web hosting... well think hard about how popular your site is actually going to be first. Your tiny shop for local fishing supplies is not going to draw 50 million people a day, so you probably don't need a complex cloud hosting setup for it, nor a whole dedicated server/server farm. Alas, a lot of people and companies nowadays seem less interested in choosing what they actually need so much as what sounds cool on their developers' CV/in online blog posts/on internet forums and Hacker News. So you get companies who are miles away from having any real customerbase whatsoever doing a boring job with technology better suited to Facebook and a couple of thousand a month cloud hosting bill.

58 points by marvel_boy 9y ago

milesokeefe 9y ago

Title should read "employees".

iffycan 9y ago
Though the typo'd version probably has some merit, too.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
sgroppino 9y ago
In the article it's employees but typo in HN headline
sctb 9y ago
Thank you, updated.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

payne92 9y ago

TL;DR Don't chase the latest tech stack to attract developers. Hot today, dated next year. "Access to developer talent" is a reasonable factor in selecting a tech stack (e.g. there's a reason few use COBOL, etc.) But it's one of MANY factors.

Kaedon 9y ago
For whom do you imagine this is tl;dr? The article itself is quite short.

jonbarker 9y ago

If boring == profitable, sign me up!

gtt 9y ago
Sadly, usually boring is just boring.
- jonbarker 9y ago
  One thing I've noticed is that companies will use cool languages as a recruiting tactic. Then you get in the door and see it's all PHP and one team wrote one Clojure script. (Not picking on PHP here).

StavrosK 9y ago

This article is three lines long. What's next for the front page? Tweets?

ISL 9y ago
Here's a probable first-page tweet from 1513 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045581
prawn 9y ago
Why not? I've seen a number of tweets make it to the HN front page. Also, when many come here for the comments, or use an article about topic X purely as an excuse to discuss that topic in general (or see what their peers think), does the length of the source article matter much?
- StavrosK 9y ago
  > when many come here for the comments, [..] does the length of the source article matter much? Fair point, I guess it doesn't.
schoen 9y ago
A tweet that reached top story within the past two days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15160149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15160149

nulagrithom 9y ago

Ugh, I hate this sentiment. "Technology moves too fast so don't bother trying to keep up!" No... It's about balance... We're looking for a Synon 2/E expert right now. It's going about as well as you'd expect.

whipoodle 9y ago
Sounds boring, so let me guess: you're overwhelmed with candidates and the project is a resounding success. You've grown weary of receiving bonus checks as testament to the company's dullness.
wavefunction 9y ago
Those experts have been able to write their own tickets for decades so I'm not surprised it's hard to find anyone. First pro tech job was at a small (8000 customer) ISP back in the 90s and our sysadmin was an AS/400 master. He'd show up once or twice a month, mostly just to check on things. I think he made more from that company than the owner ever did.

chrisco255 9y ago

Tech choices matter. The industry evolves and all of this experimentation in languages, frameworks, tooling, and libraries has led to real productivity gains. 10X developers may be rare...but I don't think it's so rare to see 10X productivity gains when it comes to tech stacks. For example, a company who runs their own servers manually can see dramatic improvements in productivity and agility if they move to a newer tech stack and run on AWS or Heroku or some PaaS as an alternative. Using JQuery may be the tried, true, and mature front end stack, but I've been able to rewrite front-end code in a different framework with less than 1/5th of the code to maintain. To summarize, I think you should hire energized, motivated, continually educated employees that stay at the top of their game...not boring ones.

kafkaesq 9y ago
I think you should hire energized, motivated, continually educated employees that stay at the top of their game...not boring ones. I think the point of the article, which was rather subtle actually, is that "top of their game" is best defined in more general terms than simply "skilled in the top random webby crap from from the last 18 months". I've been able to rewrite front-end code in a different framework with less than 1/5th of the code to maintain. And about 10,000x as many dependencies, not to mention (if not exactly a shit-ton) a considerable degree of implied bulk in the form of new abstractions ("transpiling") and random contextual crap (packaging, etc) to maintain as well. And the implied path-dependence (for the sake of temporary benefit that comes from adding X, Y and Z to the project... it's going to be that much harder to refactor and shift to something else). All for the sake of a simple autocomplete form, and maybe a popup or two. Which is exactly what's so cool about "boring" developers -- they see not just the positive tradeoffs in using the shiny stuff ("1/5 as much code") but the negative tradeoffs ("So you mean that hot new AngularJS thing everyone was yelping about 3 years ago... suddenly isn't looking so hot anymore? How come?") as well.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  The app I'm mentioning was pre-Webpack days, like 4-5 years ago. Just using KnockoutJS...which has no dependencies. It made me realize that tools can dramatically impact my output as a developer. Dependencies can sometimes be a pain in the ass to manage...but they are a huge net positive for productivity. When the choice is between downloading a battle-tested autocomplete package written and maintained by someone like PayPal (https://github.com/paypal/downshift https://github.com/paypal/downshift) and rolling your own thing...it's a no brainer. You use the battle tested lib unless you have a very good reason to roll your own thing. Some tools fade, some tools stand the test of time. AngularJS has been deprecated even by its own creators (who built a shiny new framework with the same name)...so that's a bad example.

CorvusCrypto 9y ago

> Next year, your company will be a year more mature. Yep and we will be looking at the cutting edge always to see if there are things we can use to improve our stack/development process. > Your product will be a year more developed. Well that is how software development works. > You will have a year more customers. Yes and we will therefore have at least some stable income too! > You’ll have a year more tech debt to pay off. Yes, but because we have kept up to date in trends and technology the debt is significantly less than one might expect. Plus we aren't laser beams (i.e. very narrowly focused) which means we are able to manage three primary goals: fix bugs, improve/add features, and maintain/improve our stack. This post was not great imo.

dwaltrip 9y ago

What the author meant to say is "Don't hire people who pursue new tech solely for the sake of newness". It's not about being boring. It's about being pragmatic and focused on actually executing.

colbyh 9y ago

Unpopular opinion, but I actually think this is very good advice in certain situations. If your startup is using a technology tangentially related to your core product it can totally make sense to use "boring" tech. The simplest version would be something along the lines of - building a hardware startup? It probably doesn't make sense to build your company's ecomm site on top of React/Redux/etc. Rails works. Shopify works. They are boring options but they get the job done and get out of the way. Same company needs a blog? Don't roll your own, just find someone to manage a wordpress installation and be done with it. Now that might very not be the case if your hardware has a substantial online component of course, but if your core product value is tied up in selling a hard good that doesn't need an app or a management interface of any kind then it doesn't really make sense to spend extra resources on a really cool website.

jeffdo 9y ago

I'd rather hire an 'interesting' developer who wants to build and consistently upgrade a product with the latest tech then someone who believes it too difficult. Who says your stack cant change over time, ever heard of agile development?

abhi3 9y ago

Reading the title I thought the article was going to talk about how not to hire for culture fit nonsense like playing foosball or ability to down a keg but instead it talks about hiring people who don't care enough to keep up with tech advancements.

Bretts89 9y ago

I believe in hiring the very best employees that fit the culture of your company. If your culture is a boring one, then hire the best employees which would fit well into a boring culture. If your company culture is vibrant and outgoing, then hire the very best employees that will thrive in a vibrant, outgoing culture.

cannonedhamster 9y ago

The flip side of this is that you have "boring" companies and employees who are reluctant to change even if it would make a demonstrable improvement. Doing things because you've always done them this way is just as much of a trap, and I'd suspect far more common outside of the startup realm.

CM30 9y ago

I think the more important thing here isn't to choose 'boring' employees or tech stacks, but to choose what's actually needed for your situation. If your site is a fancy web app where customers need to say, design their own website in the browser with a visual editor complete with Photoshop style image editing and what not, choose a tech stack that supports that as well as employees skilled with said stack. That's a good use case for the latest Javascript framework you've been working with recently, along with cloud hosting on AWS or the likes. On the other hand, if your site's just a content site (like say, a news blog or a basic forum), you really don't need all that fancy technology setup for it. Just create a nice basic frontend with HTML and CSS (with the odd line or two of Javascript where necessary), then use whatever your preferred scripting language and database is on the backend. Setting up a huge framework on AWS for this is like using a nuke to crack an egg. And if you're looking for web hosting... well think hard about how popular your site is actually going to be first. Your tiny shop for local fishing supplies is not going to draw 50 million people a day, so you probably don't need a complex cloud hosting setup for it, nor a whole dedicated server/server farm. Alas, a lot of people and companies nowadays seem less interested in choosing what they actually need so much as what sounds cool on their developers' CV/in online blog posts/on internet forums and Hacker News. So you get companies who are miles away from having any real customerbase whatsoever doing a boring job with technology better suited to Facebook and a couple of thousand a month cloud hosting bill.