8 ms·

Transmuting Low-Value Programmer Cred into High-Value Status Illegibility

157 points by PretzelFisch 8y ago

jeffrallen 8y ago
The only way to win the game is not to play at all. Do good work, don't let the company take advantage of you, make promises you can keep, and then KEEP THEM, treat your colleagues nicely, teach when you can, learn when your colleagues have something to teach you, say "I don't know" and "I was wrong", and "Thank you", study and practice servant leadership, and remember that your worth as a human is not very closely related to what's written on your paycheck.
- scotty79 8y ago
  Also, deciding when to switch jobs base you decission on what you have, not what you were promised or what you think you might get at your current job.
- golergka 8y ago
  > is not to play at all It's one of those games where your decision not to play it is just another move. Not always a bad one, but still a move.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - enraged_camel 8y ago
    I'd say it's usually a bad one. By staying out of politics, you're electing to be at the mercy of others, who can (and inevitably will) take advantage of you.
    - marssaxman 8y ago
      Which is a better use of time: staying in the same place and contending with assholes who want to take advantage of you, or shrugging it off and going somewhere else with fewer assholes? We are always at the mercy of others, and I prefer not to negotiate with terrorists. Let them squabble over their petty ambitions; I'd rather spend my time among people who are more interested in collaborating with me than exploiting me.
grosjona 8y ago
I would argue that there is very little correlation between a programmer's perceived skill level and their actual skill level. I know some programmers who used to be considered rock stars because they created a lot of popular libraries and modules at an opportune moment in history but years layer it turns out that their code was full of security vulnerabilities. Also some programmers are highly optimized for certain things to the point that they're terrible at everything else - I know programmers who are really great when it comes to writing performant code, but they are unwilling to make compromises to make that code more readable.
venantius 8y ago
Reminds me significantly of (and probably draws inspiration from) "The Gervais Principle"[1] [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
- wool_gather 8y ago
  Indeed; the author linked to this midway through the article and credited it with the "illegibility" idea.
  - venantius 8y ago
    Ah, missed that.
    - FearNotDaniel 8y ago
      More specifically, in another post [1] he's admitted outright that his "opportunists, idealists and pragmatists" are just a more polite renaming of the Gervais Principle's dark triad. [1] https://daedtech.com/defining-the-corporate-hierarchy/ https://daedtech.com/defining-the-corporate-hierarchy/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
marssaxman 8y ago
This entire attitude just feels gross. Rating one's credibility on a numeric scale - who thinks that way? Only assholes win these sorts of games; I'd rather ignore them and do something interesting with my time instead.
dhd415 8y ago
The concept of "status illegibility" is certainly an interesting one that coincides with some experiences I've had. In a former role in which I reported to the VP of Engineering, due to his lack of ability to directly evaluate work, he would base performance reviews on a weighted average of your teammates' assessment of your work. As such, it was very much, as the linked article on status illegibility states, that the "illegibility of the status of any member of a group is proportional to his/her distance from the edges of the group." In other words, performance near the median was widely praised, but performance both near the bottom or top received criticism. It was not a pleasant experience. Another hard-learned fact that he mentions is that being good at your job is overrated. Few of us would like to admit that, but as he explains, the benefits of some automation vs. no automation greatly exceed the benefits of some automation vs. better automation. The only workaround that I've found for that is evaluating roles for their need for technical excellence. Building a CRUD app to "revolutionize the [insert favorite industry here]"? It's not going to require or reward technical excellence. Unfortunately, the kinds of projects where technical excellence is legitimately required and rewarded are relatively rare.
- maxsilver 8y ago
  > VP of Engineering, due to his lack of ability to directly evaluate work, he would base performance reviews on a weighted average of your teammates' assessment of your work I know this is an old hat discussion, and this argument was lost ages ago, (and I don't know if you are specifically referring to this) but that situations like this happen at all really bothers me. Assuming the "VP of Engineering" means "VP of Software Engineering" (or the "CTO" of a software company, or equivalent). If he/she can't truly evaluate the work, he/she is not qualified to be in that role, full stop, no exceptions. No one expects them to read/write code all day (often, they might spend no time at all reading/writing code anymore). But they have to be able to do so, or they have no place in that role. In the same way that the Chief Nursing Officer at a Hospital has to have been a qualified licensed RN, and be able to be a qualified licensed RN, even if they don't actually work as a nurse on the floor anymore.
  - sulam 8y ago
person_of_color 8y ago
How do I get into top 5% pay when working in a satellite office?
- slivym 8y ago
  100% of your salary in a satellite office is about visibility from the main office. You should be giving talks to groups of people in the main office, partnering with top people in the main office to share best known practices, and having strategic catch ups with top management in the main office. In most large corporations (with some notable exceptions) the way pay rises are determined is that your boss will have a budget for his team (possibly $$$ but possibly just 'ratings' that fit a distribution). Then their boss will review all the teams under him to make sure the distribution and budget for their organisation is satisfied and this goes up and up until you reach departmental level. So you don't just need a good rating from your boss, you need everyone in each of those hierarchical discussions to know who you are and back your value. Because if not, it's very easy for them to cut 10% off the pay rise of drone 7b to give to Johnny star performer. As well as that there's another dynamic. If the people in those conversations think you are good, then your boss is under pressure to say you're good in order to demonstrate (s)he is a good manager who can identify talent and take the hard decisions necessary to keep the best people. Basically, you have to demonstrate value rather than provide value.
  - r_smart 8y ago
    >Basically, you have to demonstrate value rather than provide value. This was one of the most painful things I've had to learn. Finding ways to account for it in your work can be interesting.
- topkai22 8y ago
  Judging from my company- lots of travel, either to the home office or to customers.
kasey_junk 8y ago
Wasn’t 8th Light “Uncle Bobs” sons consultancy?
- plinkplonk 8y ago
  yeah highlighting "Uncle" Bob as a "10" with respect to programmer cred was a weak point of the essay. He is basically a one trick (TDD) evangelist pony and I doubt he has any serious developer cred outside the agile methodologies circlejerk groups. Not like he is Linus or Carmack or Jeff Dean. That said, the actual phenomenon that the author was trying to highlight with example is pretty valid imo. "Companies like this don’t hire 10s because a single 10 will single-handedly raise their margin or even land them clients. They do it to grease the skids of recruitment. That hire is neither about clients nor about work product — it’s about recruiting." Pure Gold.
  - Quarrelsome 8y ago
    Martin Fowler and Thoughtworks? Always struck me as the sort of place they throw greenhorns into roles far above their pay grade after some cursory "training". Not sure if that's the case but that's how it smelled.
  - twic 8y ago
    > I doubt he has any serious developer cred outside the agile methodologies circlejerk groups He doesn't even have that much cred within those groups, now he's turned into a miserable old git with out-of-date ideas. > Not like he is Linus or Carmack or Jeff Dean Heh. Whereas i think he has much, much more general cred than Jeff Dean, who is a pretty obscure figure.
ggm 8y ago
is this "the best is the enemy of the good enough" and "I don't want it perfect, I want it by Thursday" (J Pierpoint Morgan for the latter, I have no idea for the former) Feels like it is. If you aren't obviously slacking, and aren't so good you're in the wrong place you score evens from your peers. And, cohesively, you get there, for some value of there, which may be below optimum but sometimes, the local optimum is what you want.
- arwhatever 8y ago
  Voltaire?
dwaltrip 8y ago
These types of highly-specific, broad scale, psycho-social analyses can be interesting and insightful, but should always be taken with a large grain of salt. After all, the fields of psychology and sociology are still searching for fundamental paradigms, so it shouldn't be surprising how difficult it is to make strong, specific claims of this sort.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
trhway 8y ago
from my experience it isn't "the role we don't hire into" - it is "the role we typically don't hire into" :) I.e. the former is just a hi-tech version of the dealers' "we don't sell cars below MSRP".
usrusr 8y ago
I think the article is reading far too much into this whole "positions we don't hire into" thing. Usually, those are just roles invented to keep key people aboard who are refused the conventional hierarchical rise (and raise) due to Peter Principle awareness and/or not fitting in with the execs. Walking repositories of the history of in-house technology, software archeologists who know where to dig because they've been there when it happened. It's impossible to hire that kind of knowledge. Usually, when a position invented to keep that kind of knowledge aboard gets vacated, the hat won't even be handed on in-house to the next best candidate, it will just get abandoned. Unfortunately, the premise of the article comes off a bit like someone sitting on the fat spoils of strategic job hopping being unreasonably envious of the modest rewards of staying put, wishing to get them on top. I do like the humble use of "programmer cred" as a non-substitute of actual performance/ability.
- wyclif 8y ago
  Some of these roles are also where some very talented engineers end up who have decided they do not want to graduate to management positions. So it's quite possible they weren't refused advancement, they were offered it but turned it down because they wanted to keep working on [X] project instead of other products they weren't interested in, or managing people where that is a skill they know they don't have.
  - gvb 8y ago
    So it's quite possible they weren't refused advancement, they were offered it but turned it down Absolutely! Anecdata: I have 30++ years of experience. I enjoy programming. I do not enjoy managing people. I do OK managing projects, but don't enjoy it. Especially in the first 10++ years, when I had my yearly performance review I would tell my boss "whatever you do, don't make me a manager." They tried talking me into management roles quite a few times (and succeeded occasionally getting me to fill a technical management role in projects) but have mostly honored my request. If I had gone into a (technical) management role I would likely have made a little more money but my stress level would be a lot higher and my enjoyment would have been way way lower. I've watched other engineers that went the technical management route and have been very happy with my choice. Staying heavily technical isn't the right choice for everybody, but it was absolutely the right choice for me.
rienbdj 8y ago
It is interesting how this article assumes programmer skill has little overall business impact, whereas PG famously argued the opposite. Does the conclusion hold without this assumption?
- arwhatever 8y ago
  Using the article's definition of "programmer cred," might the the issue be that the recognition of programmer skill does not extend beyond a very small social radius, regardless of actual business impact?
- granshaw 8y ago
  I think it matters greatly whether we’re talking about the first programmer (like pg was), vs the tenth, vs the hundredth

157 points by PretzelFisch 8y ago

The only way to win the game is not to play at all. Do good work, don't let the company take advantage of you, make promises you can keep, and then KEEP THEM, treat your colleagues nicely, teach when you can, learn when your colleagues have something to teach you, say "I don't know" and "I was wrong", and "Thank you", study and practice servant leadership, and remember that your worth as a human is not very closely related to what's written on your paycheck.

scotty79 8y ago
Also, deciding when to switch jobs base you decission on what you have, not what you were promised or what you think you might get at your current job.
golergka 8y ago
> is not to play at all It's one of those games where your decision not to play it is just another move. Not always a bad one, but still a move.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  I'd say it's usually a bad one. By staying out of politics, you're electing to be at the mercy of others, who can (and inevitably will) take advantage of you.
  - marssaxman 8y ago
    Which is a better use of time: staying in the same place and contending with assholes who want to take advantage of you, or shrugging it off and going somewhere else with fewer assholes? We are always at the mercy of others, and I prefer not to negotiate with terrorists. Let them squabble over their petty ambitions; I'd rather spend my time among people who are more interested in collaborating with me than exploiting me.

grosjona 8y ago

I would argue that there is very little correlation between a programmer's perceived skill level and their actual skill level. I know some programmers who used to be considered rock stars because they created a lot of popular libraries and modules at an opportune moment in history but years layer it turns out that their code was full of security vulnerabilities. Also some programmers are highly optimized for certain things to the point that they're terrible at everything else - I know programmers who are really great when it comes to writing performant code, but they are unwilling to make compromises to make that code more readable.

venantius 8y ago

Reminds me significantly of (and probably draws inspiration from) "The Gervais Principle"[1] [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

wool_gather 8y ago
Indeed; the author linked to this midway through the article and credited it with the "illegibility" idea.
- venantius 8y ago
  Ah, missed that.
  - FearNotDaniel 8y ago
    More specifically, in another post [1] he's admitted outright that his "opportunists, idealists and pragmatists" are just a more polite renaming of the Gervais Principle's dark triad. [1] https://daedtech.com/defining-the-corporate-hierarchy/ https://daedtech.com/defining-the-corporate-hierarchy/
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

marssaxman 8y ago

This entire attitude just feels gross. Rating one's credibility on a numeric scale - who thinks that way? Only assholes win these sorts of games; I'd rather ignore them and do something interesting with my time instead.

dhd415 8y ago

The concept of "status illegibility" is certainly an interesting one that coincides with some experiences I've had. In a former role in which I reported to the VP of Engineering, due to his lack of ability to directly evaluate work, he would base performance reviews on a weighted average of your teammates' assessment of your work. As such, it was very much, as the linked article on status illegibility states, that the "illegibility of the status of any member of a group is proportional to his/her distance from the edges of the group." In other words, performance near the median was widely praised, but performance both near the bottom or top received criticism. It was not a pleasant experience. Another hard-learned fact that he mentions is that being good at your job is overrated. Few of us would like to admit that, but as he explains, the benefits of some automation vs. no automation greatly exceed the benefits of some automation vs. better automation. The only workaround that I've found for that is evaluating roles for their need for technical excellence. Building a CRUD app to "revolutionize the [insert favorite industry here]"? It's not going to require or reward technical excellence. Unfortunately, the kinds of projects where technical excellence is legitimately required and rewarded are relatively rare.

maxsilver 8y ago
> VP of Engineering, due to his lack of ability to directly evaluate work, he would base performance reviews on a weighted average of your teammates' assessment of your work I know this is an old hat discussion, and this argument was lost ages ago, (and I don't know if you are specifically referring to this) but that situations like this happen at all really bothers me. Assuming the "VP of Engineering" means "VP of Software Engineering" (or the "CTO" of a software company, or equivalent). If he/she can't truly evaluate the work, he/she is not qualified to be in that role, full stop, no exceptions. No one expects them to read/write code all day (often, they might spend no time at all reading/writing code anymore). But they have to be able to do so, or they have no place in that role. In the same way that the Chief Nursing Officer at a Hospital has to have been a qualified licensed RN, and be able to be a qualified licensed RN, even if they don't actually work as a nurse on the floor anymore.
- sulam 8y ago

person_of_color 8y ago

How do I get into top 5% pay when working in a satellite office?

slivym 8y ago
100% of your salary in a satellite office is about visibility from the main office. You should be giving talks to groups of people in the main office, partnering with top people in the main office to share best known practices, and having strategic catch ups with top management in the main office. In most large corporations (with some notable exceptions) the way pay rises are determined is that your boss will have a budget for his team (possibly $$$ but possibly just 'ratings' that fit a distribution). Then their boss will review all the teams under him to make sure the distribution and budget for their organisation is satisfied and this goes up and up until you reach departmental level. So you don't just need a good rating from your boss, you need everyone in each of those hierarchical discussions to know who you are and back your value. Because if not, it's very easy for them to cut 10% off the pay rise of drone 7b to give to Johnny star performer. As well as that there's another dynamic. If the people in those conversations think you are good, then your boss is under pressure to say you're good in order to demonstrate (s)he is a good manager who can identify talent and take the hard decisions necessary to keep the best people. Basically, you have to demonstrate value rather than provide value.
- r_smart 8y ago
  >Basically, you have to demonstrate value rather than provide value. This was one of the most painful things I've had to learn. Finding ways to account for it in your work can be interesting.
topkai22 8y ago
Judging from my company- lots of travel, either to the home office or to customers.

kasey_junk 8y ago

Wasn’t 8th Light “Uncle Bobs” sons consultancy?

plinkplonk 8y ago
yeah highlighting "Uncle" Bob as a "10" with respect to programmer cred was a weak point of the essay. He is basically a one trick (TDD) evangelist pony and I doubt he has any serious developer cred outside the agile methodologies circlejerk groups. Not like he is Linus or Carmack or Jeff Dean. That said, the actual phenomenon that the author was trying to highlight with example is pretty valid imo. "Companies like this don’t hire 10s because a single 10 will single-handedly raise their margin or even land them clients. They do it to grease the skids of recruitment. That hire is neither about clients nor about work product — it’s about recruiting." Pure Gold.
- Quarrelsome 8y ago
  Martin Fowler and Thoughtworks? Always struck me as the sort of place they throw greenhorns into roles far above their pay grade after some cursory "training". Not sure if that's the case but that's how it smelled.
- twic 8y ago
  > I doubt he has any serious developer cred outside the agile methodologies circlejerk groups He doesn't even have that much cred within those groups, now he's turned into a miserable old git with out-of-date ideas. > Not like he is Linus or Carmack or Jeff Dean Heh. Whereas i think he has much, much more general cred than Jeff Dean, who is a pretty obscure figure.

ggm 8y ago

is this "the best is the enemy of the good enough" and "I don't want it perfect, I want it by Thursday" (J Pierpoint Morgan for the latter, I have no idea for the former) Feels like it is. If you aren't obviously slacking, and aren't so good you're in the wrong place you score evens from your peers. And, cohesively, you get there, for some value of there, which may be below optimum but sometimes, the local optimum is what you want.

arwhatever 8y ago
Voltaire?

dwaltrip 8y ago

These types of highly-specific, broad scale, psycho-social analyses can be interesting and insightful, but should always be taken with a large grain of salt. After all, the fields of psychology and sociology are still searching for fundamental paradigms, so it shouldn't be surprising how difficult it is to make strong, specific claims of this sort.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

trhway 8y ago

from my experience it isn't "the role we don't hire into" - it is "the role we typically don't hire into" :) I.e. the former is just a hi-tech version of the dealers' "we don't sell cars below MSRP".

usrusr 8y ago

I think the article is reading far too much into this whole "positions we don't hire into" thing. Usually, those are just roles invented to keep key people aboard who are refused the conventional hierarchical rise (and raise) due to Peter Principle awareness and/or not fitting in with the execs. Walking repositories of the history of in-house technology, software archeologists who know where to dig because they've been there when it happened. It's impossible to hire that kind of knowledge. Usually, when a position invented to keep that kind of knowledge aboard gets vacated, the hat won't even be handed on in-house to the next best candidate, it will just get abandoned. Unfortunately, the premise of the article comes off a bit like someone sitting on the fat spoils of strategic job hopping being unreasonably envious of the modest rewards of staying put, wishing to get them on top. I do like the humble use of "programmer cred" as a non-substitute of actual performance/ability.

wyclif 8y ago
Some of these roles are also where some very talented engineers end up who have decided they do not want to graduate to management positions. So it's quite possible they weren't refused advancement, they were offered it but turned it down because they wanted to keep working on [X] project instead of other products they weren't interested in, or managing people where that is a skill they know they don't have.
- gvb 8y ago
  So it's quite possible they weren't refused advancement, they were offered it but turned it down Absolutely! Anecdata: I have 30++ years of experience. I enjoy programming. I do not enjoy managing people. I do OK managing projects, but don't enjoy it. Especially in the first 10++ years, when I had my yearly performance review I would tell my boss "whatever you do, don't make me a manager." They tried talking me into management roles quite a few times (and succeeded occasionally getting me to fill a technical management role in projects) but have mostly honored my request. If I had gone into a (technical) management role I would likely have made a little more money but my stress level would be a lot higher and my enjoyment would have been way way lower. I've watched other engineers that went the technical management route and have been very happy with my choice. Staying heavily technical isn't the right choice for everybody, but it was absolutely the right choice for me.

rienbdj 8y ago

It is interesting how this article assumes programmer skill has little overall business impact, whereas PG famously argued the opposite. Does the conclusion hold without this assumption?

arwhatever 8y ago
Using the article's definition of "programmer cred," might the the issue be that the recognition of programmer skill does not extend beyond a very small social radius, regardless of actual business impact?
granshaw 8y ago
I think it matters greatly whether we’re talking about the first programmer (like pg was), vs the tenth, vs the hundredth