4 ms·

Lame. What happens when you're over thirty and want to marry and have kids? Are you then not cool because you need/want to have a stable home? Are you not enou

Lame. What happens when you're over thirty and want to marry and have kids? Are you then not cool because you need/want to have a stable home? Are you not enough of a hacker, not 1337 enough, because you want to work for a company that might be around in 3 months? It never ceases to amaze me how many people, who consider themselves very smart no less, by default consider anyone even five to ten years older than them complete fools for making choices that would be irrational to a 20 year old. Got news for you, you'll grow up one day, if you're lucky.

brailsafe 9y ago
What happens is that your lifestyle has changed to be more in line with what BigCo is looking for. If the scale tips more towards family life maybe you care less about excitement and variety in your work life. All of that is fine. If your life consists entirely of taking care of your family and working a stable job, then what part of you remains a hacker? On the other hand, if you're doing all that while working with your kids on building an electron microscope, then that's what makes you a hacker. I'd add that those would apply to a young person as well who simply works a stable job and doesn't do anything to explore their curiosity in technology.
braythwayt 9y ago
The author, who speaks of himself in the third person, was a parent and in his forties when he wrote that. Perhaps the article is not a comment on whether making conservative life choices is or isn't cool. Perhaps the article is not a comment on whether a degree in CS does or doesn't provide personal edification or improves your programming. Perhaps the article is nothing more than what it claims to be: A comment on why a certain type of conservative company requires a degree, and their opinion of people who embrace or eschew conservative life choices.
- Retric 9y ago
  Large companies employ many people without degrees, it's really front line managers that handle those requirements. Further, while self taught programmers are often very good they tend to be weaker at working with other developers on large scale projects. So, many managers have examples of both and still prefer people with degrees for most projects.
  - braythwayt 9y ago
    Waving hands furiously, we might say that everything is more nuänced than can be ex-plained in a tweet or a blog post, and that nothing is absolutely uniform. We can also say that in the twelve years since this blog post was first written, attitudes towards hiring have changed in many ways. Nobody (for some loose definition of "nobody") cares how we would move Mount Fuji, or how many ping pong balls would fit in a 747. Broadly speaking, though, I stand by the fundamental assertion that the stereotypical "BigCo" values conformity, and values people who value conformity, and that many of the things they lok for are, at a deeper level, social signals. Startups aren't so different. In 2012, we could just as easily have rewritten this blog post to be about a startup wanting applicants to have a GitHub profile because it indicated a certain need to belong to "hacker culture" that the hypothetical startup could exploit.
  - dorfsmay 9y ago
    Do they teach how to work with other developers on large scale projects in CS degrees? Or is the problem that people without those degrees can't get hired BG big corps with large scale projects and can therefore never get the experience?
    - Retric 9y ago
      It's a set of skills that's indirectly taught in many CS programs. You can debate the relative importance of for example a shared vocabulary, but it's clearly useful.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  There's way too much "conservative" in this.

brailsafe 9y ago

What happens is that your lifestyle has changed to be more in line with what BigCo is looking for. If the scale tips more towards family life maybe you care less about excitement and variety in your work life. All of that is fine. If your life consists entirely of taking care of your family and working a stable job, then what part of you remains a hacker? On the other hand, if you're doing all that while working with your kids on building an electron microscope, then that's what makes you a hacker. I'd add that those would apply to a young person as well who simply works a stable job and doesn't do anything to explore their curiosity in technology.

braythwayt 9y ago

The author, who speaks of himself in the third person, was a parent and in his forties when he wrote that. Perhaps the article is not a comment on whether making conservative life choices is or isn't cool. Perhaps the article is not a comment on whether a degree in CS does or doesn't provide personal edification or improves your programming. Perhaps the article is nothing more than what it claims to be: A comment on why a certain type of conservative company requires a degree, and their opinion of people who embrace or eschew conservative life choices.

Retric 9y ago
Large companies employ many people without degrees, it's really front line managers that handle those requirements. Further, while self taught programmers are often very good they tend to be weaker at working with other developers on large scale projects. So, many managers have examples of both and still prefer people with degrees for most projects.
- braythwayt 9y ago
  Waving hands furiously, we might say that everything is more nuänced than can be ex-plained in a tweet or a blog post, and that nothing is absolutely uniform. We can also say that in the twelve years since this blog post was first written, attitudes towards hiring have changed in many ways. Nobody (for some loose definition of "nobody") cares how we would move Mount Fuji, or how many ping pong balls would fit in a 747. Broadly speaking, though, I stand by the fundamental assertion that the stereotypical "BigCo" values conformity, and values people who value conformity, and that many of the things they lok for are, at a deeper level, social signals. Startups aren't so different. In 2012, we could just as easily have rewritten this blog post to be about a startup wanting applicants to have a GitHub profile because it indicated a certain need to belong to "hacker culture" that the hypothetical startup could exploit.
- dorfsmay 9y ago
  Do they teach how to work with other developers on large scale projects in CS degrees? Or is the problem that people without those degrees can't get hired BG big corps with large scale projects and can therefore never get the experience?
  - Retric 9y ago
    It's a set of skills that's indirectly taught in many CS programs. You can debate the relative importance of for example a shared vocabulary, but it's clearly useful.
EADGBE 9y ago
There's way too much "conservative" in this.