6 ms·

> The final decision in recruiting a "great developer", as always, comes down to some subjective opinion based on a range of criteria that can't be proven to ha

> The final decision in recruiting a "great developer", as always, comes down to some subjective opinion based on a range of criteria that can't be proven to have had any meaning in the first place. Careful, this road can lead to nihilism. Subjectivity is an important part of reality. Subjective things are also messy. We can acknowledge that these aspects are subjective and wrestle with them the best we can, or we can deny they exist at all, and end up pushing those problems somewhere else, where they might fester and become worse. > I always challenge anyone to define precisely, in quantifiable terms, what a "great developer" is exactly. Replace "great developer" with words like "democracy", "truth", "love", "good music", "healthy diet", "pornography". We can't reliably quantify or strictly define any of those things. Sometimes "I know it when I see it" and sometimes not, when cognitive biases and instincts lead us astray. But to deny there is such a thing as a good developer, or a "great" developer, because we don't have perfect metrics, seems like going too far. I agree that having a "pseudoscientific" process can be bad. When you are dealing with something that is inherently subjective, you should resist both urges: one is false precision, a system that claims to cleanly settle once and for all what is inherently messy and difficult; and the other is the denial that that 'something' exists at all.

threatofrain 9y ago
I feel like empiricists routinely and easily perform the partially opinionated act of operationalization, and what's being critiqued here is the <lack> of opinion in operationalization, except for the mocking of scientific appearance. Likewise, many discussions on consciousness are worthy of critique for lacking operationalization. We will always question whether the operationalization is a good proxy, but there's a difference when firms lack even the opinion to do so.
ci5er 9y ago
You're just saying that abstract nouns have no explicit referent like a brick or apple. I take exception to democracy as a noun or attribute like 'truth', however. Truth is an abstract attribute. Sometimes a noun. Democracy is a process: two wolves and a sheep voting on what's up for dinner.
- tomxor 9y ago
  > You're just saying that abstract nouns have no explicit referent like a brick or apple. I think smallnamespace has the right idea but maybe chose some week analogies in his examples, you've also picked the the most well defined one (although it's popularly contorted into many things it's original definition is actually quite strict). Here's a better analogy, actually it's not really even an analogy, just a generalisation that countless people have attempted and failed to define and quantify throughout history: Intelligence, (define it), scientists can't, and IQ doesn't cut it. We can quantify some specific easily measurable abilities but there are many others we can't, seemingly vague things like intuition that are vital ingredients to the umbrella of "intelligence" are just do difficult to nail down individually let alone in concert. Likewise you can measure different aspects of developers, implement this generic algorithm, define the complexity of this code in big O notation, they can sometimes be indicators like IQ but none of them really point to actual brilliance, that can only be measured on the job. Some will argue against me here but I don't think these types of things can be measured (except externally by overall results when applied), because in order to measure we need something to compare to, but everyones own bag of tricks is nuanced and intricately different to everyone elses in subtle ways... if we all thought exactly the same way but to different "abilities" then everyone would be making the same insights but at different speeds and efforts, that's not what people do, people just think in their own way and the more unique that is the more "clever" they can appear. Where this analogy breaks down (or does not share with) is that programming is not all about being clever and unique (although that will of course differentiate you), it's also a craft that it's possible to be good at without being particularly unique... it's quite possible to have one and not the other, you could come up with original solutions to problems but be terrible at architecting and implementing it.
  - ci5er 9y ago
    You articulated this very well, but somehow I've lost the thread (if I ever had it). Are you essentially agreeing-with/supporting what /u/smallnamespace said? It seems we can all agree that hiring software developers, while having no false negatives and no false positives is hard.

threatofrain 9y ago

I feel like empiricists routinely and easily perform the partially opinionated act of operationalization, and what's being critiqued here is the <lack> of opinion in operationalization, except for the mocking of scientific appearance. Likewise, many discussions on consciousness are worthy of critique for lacking operationalization. We will always question whether the operationalization is a good proxy, but there's a difference when firms lack even the opinion to do so.

ci5er 9y ago

You're just saying that abstract nouns have no explicit referent like a brick or apple. I take exception to democracy as a noun or attribute like 'truth', however. Truth is an abstract attribute. Sometimes a noun. Democracy is a process: two wolves and a sheep voting on what's up for dinner.

tomxor 9y ago
> You're just saying that abstract nouns have no explicit referent like a brick or apple. I think smallnamespace has the right idea but maybe chose some week analogies in his examples, you've also picked the the most well defined one (although it's popularly contorted into many things it's original definition is actually quite strict). Here's a better analogy, actually it's not really even an analogy, just a generalisation that countless people have attempted and failed to define and quantify throughout history: Intelligence, (define it), scientists can't, and IQ doesn't cut it. We can quantify some specific easily measurable abilities but there are many others we can't, seemingly vague things like intuition that are vital ingredients to the umbrella of "intelligence" are just do difficult to nail down individually let alone in concert. Likewise you can measure different aspects of developers, implement this generic algorithm, define the complexity of this code in big O notation, they can sometimes be indicators like IQ but none of them really point to actual brilliance, that can only be measured on the job. Some will argue against me here but I don't think these types of things can be measured (except externally by overall results when applied), because in order to measure we need something to compare to, but everyones own bag of tricks is nuanced and intricately different to everyone elses in subtle ways... if we all thought exactly the same way but to different "abilities" then everyone would be making the same insights but at different speeds and efforts, that's not what people do, people just think in their own way and the more unique that is the more "clever" they can appear. Where this analogy breaks down (or does not share with) is that programming is not all about being clever and unique (although that will of course differentiate you), it's also a craft that it's possible to be good at without being particularly unique... it's quite possible to have one and not the other, you could come up with original solutions to problems but be terrible at architecting and implementing it.
- ci5er 9y ago
  You articulated this very well, but somehow I've lost the thread (if I ever had it). Are you essentially agreeing-with/supporting what /u/smallnamespace said? It seems we can all agree that hiring software developers, while having no false negatives and no false positives is hard.