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I find it interesting that HN commenters frequently take it for granted that someone who tinkered with programming at an early age and do side projects is a bet

I find it interesting that HN commenters frequently take it for granted that someone who tinkered with programming at an early age and do side projects is a better performer at work. I have never seen any multiple-data-point evidence presented to support it. Sure, various prominent entrepreneurs used computers as hobbyists (Gates, Zuckerberg), but does that apply to the typical programmer? We all encountered students in classes who didn't study yet completely grokked their mathematics and algorithms coursework. Why is it so hard to believe that those quick learners use their time effectively at work? Additionally, a multiplier to good engineering is strong communication and organizational skills; those can be enhanced through social recreational activity, and diminished by spending leisure time in solitude. I'm not claiming either method is better, and intuitively the passionate engineer should win, but we shouldn't take it for granted until we get some actual information. Edit: there seems to be some belief that I don't value experience. It is extremely important. We just shouldn't take it for granted that programming at home is as valuable as work experience.

kamaal 9y ago
Its not necessarily starting early in programming. Its being in general being good at 'scoring marks' vs 'doing projects'. The former and latter take very different skill sets, and their returns too are often very different. If you are good at doing projects. Along the way you learn a lot of other very important life skills. Things like resourcefulness, persisting at things, immunity to failure, trying many times etc. And these come handy and are usable to to many things that actually matter in the real world. That is building things. These things are harder to gain at a later stage in life because expectations from one's life at that time are different and you have to worry more about monthly payments and putting food on the table. You don't have 10 - 15 years lying around to do what other programmers have done in their early years where it was cheap to that in terms of time. You are also discounting the accumulative effects of these things. After a while due to years of practice, early starters are likely to get very good at things in a far more disproportionate way than those who come later.
- linkregister 9y ago
  Would participation in athletics or math competitions fulfill your requirements for early hard work and adversity? I do agree with your premise. I just don't see where you actually disagree with mine. I'm not discounting anything. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be a given that engineers who got into the field late are automatically less able. > early starters are likely to get very good at things in a far more disproportionate way than those who come later. We think that but it's not actually demonstrated. Entering a field at the age of 18 or 20 isn't actually late. Until we actually have evidence that people who programmed before college have better outcomes, we need to stop talking about it as if it's a known truth.
  - kamaal 9y ago
    >>Would participation in athletics or math competitions fulfill your requirements for early hard work and adversity? Yes, but in School and a little higher- math is about learning heuristics and ready made procedures to solve problems in algebra and plugging numbers in formulas to get answers. And that is one of the biggest reasons why Nerds go onto to do things like projects to bail from the what is largely a useless academic exercise that gives you nothing real at the end. Sports has a binary distribution, you either make the big league money or you don't. >>I'm just saying that it shouldn't be a given that engineers who got into the field late are automatically less able. They won't be treated as such. They will be evaluated on the same grounds as the long slog people. And that is precisely the problem. Somethings come only with time. >>Entering a field at the age of 18 or 20 isn't actually late. Its isn't late in absolute terms. But everything in the world is comparative. The world is essentially a stack ranking system. You can do anything at any age you want. But there are costs associated with starting late, and they are in comparison with people who are long there.
zaptheimpaler 9y ago
In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less. There is little difference between "experience programming during a job" and "experience programming for fun". It is the same activity. So of course those with more experience should be expected (on average) to better than those with less. Of course those who seek out more experience due to passion will (on average) be better than those who don't. It's not an unusual thing to expect at all. People who care more do better.. in every human endeavor, and this is widely accepted by society. It only seems unusual when newcomers cry "unfair" when they see others enjoying the fruits of their labor. You can ask for data - great, we don't know the answer. But if I had to guess one way or the other, based on all human experience, yes I would lean heavily towards experience. Its why professors know more than students, why Edison invented a lightbulb after a thousand other failed inventions, it is the basis for the very concept of an expert - its why we appoint a doctor instead of a physicist to run a hospital. Its pretty goddamn fundamental - people get better at things with time, so those with more time tend to be better.
- linkregister 9y ago
  > In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less. This isn't true. Those who do more with their work experience are paid more. We all know engineers who have been at the same company for over a decade, but have practically nothing to show for it. There is an enormous disparity between engineers. There's a reason why Google and Facebook allow engineers to stay Senior Engineers for an entire career: most don't actually progress beyond a certain point. Jeff Dean and Rob Pike aren't good because they've been programming for a long time. They're good because they've developed their organizational skills, architectural skills, communication skills, and excellent public speaking (this is vital as a tech lead and higher). None of those can be developed by programming on something cool on the weekend. None of what you said actually disputes my statement; we both value experience. I'm just trying to communicate to you that extra hours programming at home might not be as intrinsically valuable as you might think.
  - zaptheimpaler 9y ago
flukus 9y ago
It would be a hard study to do, many of the non-tinkerers will never enter the industry in the first place. For a fair evaluation I think you'd have to look at first year comp-sci students and then see where they are in 10 years. Personally I think the correlation I've seen personally is strong enough that I'd be shocked if a study proved it otherwise.
- kamaal 9y ago
  >>It would be a hard study to do, many of the non-tinkerers will never enter the industry in the first place. They will if there is enough incentive. They won't other wise. For example: CS definitely sees more diversity than mechanical engineering, simply because its easier to get paid and higher in CS. Even in CS a lot of people eventually hop to MBA as that is even more better in terms of making low-effort big-money.
  - willchen 9y ago
    Citation?
vt100 9y ago
If we did manage produce a study with multiple-data-point evidence supporting it, then should we legislate to compel all businesses to adopt the conclusions and recruit the same way? The free market already allows founders and backers to back their theories with money and compete in the marketplace.
userpass 9y ago
What if the group of those quick learners happens to intersect with those that do side projects and "tinkered" with programming at an early age?

kamaal 9y ago

Its not necessarily starting early in programming. Its being in general being good at 'scoring marks' vs 'doing projects'. The former and latter take very different skill sets, and their returns too are often very different. If you are good at doing projects. Along the way you learn a lot of other very important life skills. Things like resourcefulness, persisting at things, immunity to failure, trying many times etc. And these come handy and are usable to to many things that actually matter in the real world. That is building things. These things are harder to gain at a later stage in life because expectations from one's life at that time are different and you have to worry more about monthly payments and putting food on the table. You don't have 10 - 15 years lying around to do what other programmers have done in their early years where it was cheap to that in terms of time. You are also discounting the accumulative effects of these things. After a while due to years of practice, early starters are likely to get very good at things in a far more disproportionate way than those who come later.

linkregister 9y ago
Would participation in athletics or math competitions fulfill your requirements for early hard work and adversity? I do agree with your premise. I just don't see where you actually disagree with mine. I'm not discounting anything. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be a given that engineers who got into the field late are automatically less able. > early starters are likely to get very good at things in a far more disproportionate way than those who come later. We think that but it's not actually demonstrated. Entering a field at the age of 18 or 20 isn't actually late. Until we actually have evidence that people who programmed before college have better outcomes, we need to stop talking about it as if it's a known truth.
- kamaal 9y ago
  >>Would participation in athletics or math competitions fulfill your requirements for early hard work and adversity? Yes, but in School and a little higher- math is about learning heuristics and ready made procedures to solve problems in algebra and plugging numbers in formulas to get answers. And that is one of the biggest reasons why Nerds go onto to do things like projects to bail from the what is largely a useless academic exercise that gives you nothing real at the end. Sports has a binary distribution, you either make the big league money or you don't. >>I'm just saying that it shouldn't be a given that engineers who got into the field late are automatically less able. They won't be treated as such. They will be evaluated on the same grounds as the long slog people. And that is precisely the problem. Somethings come only with time. >>Entering a field at the age of 18 or 20 isn't actually late. Its isn't late in absolute terms. But everything in the world is comparative. The world is essentially a stack ranking system. You can do anything at any age you want. But there are costs associated with starting late, and they are in comparison with people who are long there.

zaptheimpaler 9y ago

In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less. There is little difference between "experience programming during a job" and "experience programming for fun". It is the same activity. So of course those with more experience should be expected (on average) to better than those with less. Of course those who seek out more experience due to passion will (on average) be better than those who don't. It's not an unusual thing to expect at all. People who care more do better.. in every human endeavor, and this is widely accepted by society. It only seems unusual when newcomers cry "unfair" when they see others enjoying the fruits of their labor. You can ask for data - great, we don't know the answer. But if I had to guess one way or the other, based on all human experience, yes I would lean heavily towards experience. Its why professors know more than students, why Edison invented a lightbulb after a thousand other failed inventions, it is the basis for the very concept of an expert - its why we appoint a doctor instead of a physicist to run a hospital. Its pretty goddamn fundamental - people get better at things with time, so those with more time tend to be better.

linkregister 9y ago
> In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less. This isn't true. Those who do more with their work experience are paid more. We all know engineers who have been at the same company for over a decade, but have practically nothing to show for it. There is an enormous disparity between engineers. There's a reason why Google and Facebook allow engineers to stay Senior Engineers for an entire career: most don't actually progress beyond a certain point. Jeff Dean and Rob Pike aren't good because they've been programming for a long time. They're good because they've developed their organizational skills, architectural skills, communication skills, and excellent public speaking (this is vital as a tech lead and higher). None of those can be developed by programming on something cool on the weekend. None of what you said actually disputes my statement; we both value experience. I'm just trying to communicate to you that extra hours programming at home might not be as intrinsically valuable as you might think.
- zaptheimpaler 9y ago

flukus 9y ago

It would be a hard study to do, many of the non-tinkerers will never enter the industry in the first place. For a fair evaluation I think you'd have to look at first year comp-sci students and then see where they are in 10 years. Personally I think the correlation I've seen personally is strong enough that I'd be shocked if a study proved it otherwise.

kamaal 9y ago
>>It would be a hard study to do, many of the non-tinkerers will never enter the industry in the first place. They will if there is enough incentive. They won't other wise. For example: CS definitely sees more diversity than mechanical engineering, simply because its easier to get paid and higher in CS. Even in CS a lot of people eventually hop to MBA as that is even more better in terms of making low-effort big-money.
- willchen 9y ago
  Citation?

vt100 9y ago

If we did manage produce a study with multiple-data-point evidence supporting it, then should we legislate to compel all businesses to adopt the conclusions and recruit the same way? The free market already allows founders and backers to back their theories with money and compete in the marketplace.

userpass 9y ago

What if the group of those quick learners happens to intersect with those that do side projects and "tinkered" with programming at an early age?