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Are you sure we're not debating pedanticisms here? Clearly he delivered _something_ that let you derive those gains. Whether it was a new feature, an algo/dat

Are you sure we're not debating pedanticisms here? Clearly he delivered _something_ that let you derive those gains. Whether it was a new feature, an algo/data analysis that pointed out optimizations, whether it was 2 years training new employees who ended up being powerhouses, whether it was simply being a good lead for his team and running interference/making sure they're productive, to me those are all forms of delivering a result. Nostrademons put it better than my perhaps-too-succinct summary. You needed this dev to do something for you, and they accomplished it. They shipped. (This gets even more vague when you get higher level employees who set their own mission, but at the end of the day you're still judging them by some metric of long-term success. Do they have a track record of meeting that? Then yes, they're probably pretty solid by my standard.) And for the record, yes, my peers who "just ship" have regularly returned <large number> values here. I have the advantage of working for a bigCo so it's easy to generate outsized returns; so I'd say to not let the number distract from my point. I want devs I can rely on without babysitting, open and closed. Over the last 10-15 years, I've come to realize that nothing has come to mean as much to me as knowing I have a team can honestly _trust_ to get the job done. That's pretty exclusively why I define "Great" the way I do; nothing else feels quite as good to me nowadays as when a peer says "I got that handled" and I just know 100% it is. Give me a team made up of people like that and I'd tilt at any windmill :)

sheepmullet 9y ago
> Are you sure we're not debating pedanticisms here? I'm not sure. Maybe. > Clearly he delivered _something_ that let you derive those gains. > to me those are all forms of delivering a result. But then by shipped you simply mean productive over the course of their employement - that's a pretty context sensitive metric to hire by. For example I've found through my own failures that being highly productive at a big corporate does not translate to being highly productive at a small startup. I mean I went from top 5% to middle of the pack.
- existencebox 9y ago
  To the latter point, I certainly had a similar experience, and that's in fact why I value track record so highly. It took a very different set of skills when I made my own transition from contracting -> academia -> bigCo, but I'd loop this back to my "thesis", namely that someone observing my weakness after each step would rightfully observe I don't have a track record within that context. To some extent this seems logical, would we call a home carpenter "great" within the context of industrial skyscraper construction? The moment you step back from a rather tight focus, (and this may be the root question/debate about "what does great mean", and why my approach has generated some highly opposed responses, because I try to dodge that problem by limiting the scope) any commonalities become much harder to define, and limited mostly to "meta-skills." So basically, you're right, for me it is very context sensitive, and as I said upfront, I have no silver bullet for identifying greatness without digging into that context quite a bit. In prior threads about the trouble with interviewing I've been very eager to both share the techniques I use/find out how others approach the problem, since summarizing after the fact what I found valuable, much much easier than determining it in a loop. I would love techniques that let me determine how well someone's skills in context A transfer to B, but that is a _massively_ dimensioned question that I can't even begin to hand-wave at, beyond that it might go back to my "meta-skills" categorization.
shanghaiaway 9y ago
People are poking holes in your machismo bullshit claims about software development, and then you redefined your initial claim to simply be that great developers "do their job." It contains zero information.
- existencebox 8y ago
  If you really 1. consider an attempt at simplification "machismo bullshit", 1.5 don't realize the irony in responding in that fashion 2. consider "doing ones job without creating debt" to contain zero information, and deride my attempt to engage others in discussion and 3. are taking this aggressive and ad-hominem a response to said discussions, I'm very glad we apparently live in different worlds of software development. I respect that you'd take the time to tell me why you disagree. I don't respect the way you've conveyed your stance.

sheepmullet 9y ago

> Are you sure we're not debating pedanticisms here? I'm not sure. Maybe. > Clearly he delivered _something_ that let you derive those gains. > to me those are all forms of delivering a result. But then by shipped you simply mean productive over the course of their employement - that's a pretty context sensitive metric to hire by. For example I've found through my own failures that being highly productive at a big corporate does not translate to being highly productive at a small startup. I mean I went from top 5% to middle of the pack.

existencebox 9y ago
To the latter point, I certainly had a similar experience, and that's in fact why I value track record so highly. It took a very different set of skills when I made my own transition from contracting -> academia -> bigCo, but I'd loop this back to my "thesis", namely that someone observing my weakness after each step would rightfully observe I don't have a track record within that context. To some extent this seems logical, would we call a home carpenter "great" within the context of industrial skyscraper construction? The moment you step back from a rather tight focus, (and this may be the root question/debate about "what does great mean", and why my approach has generated some highly opposed responses, because I try to dodge that problem by limiting the scope) any commonalities become much harder to define, and limited mostly to "meta-skills." So basically, you're right, for me it is very context sensitive, and as I said upfront, I have no silver bullet for identifying greatness without digging into that context quite a bit. In prior threads about the trouble with interviewing I've been very eager to both share the techniques I use/find out how others approach the problem, since summarizing after the fact what I found valuable, much much easier than determining it in a loop. I would love techniques that let me determine how well someone's skills in context A transfer to B, but that is a _massively_ dimensioned question that I can't even begin to hand-wave at, beyond that it might go back to my "meta-skills" categorization.

shanghaiaway 9y ago

People are poking holes in your machismo bullshit claims about software development, and then you redefined your initial claim to simply be that great developers "do their job." It contains zero information.

existencebox 8y ago
If you really 1. consider an attempt at simplification "machismo bullshit", 1.5 don't realize the irony in responding in that fashion 2. consider "doing ones job without creating debt" to contain zero information, and deride my attempt to engage others in discussion and 3. are taking this aggressive and ad-hominem a response to said discussions, I'm very glad we apparently live in different worlds of software development. I respect that you'd take the time to tell me why you disagree. I don't respect the way you've conveyed your stance.