6 ms·

This is true except for the "clever and lazy" part. In reality this should be "intelligent but with no skills, let more accomplished people do the work but take

by loap 7y ago

This is true except for the "clever and lazy" part. In reality this should be "intelligent but with no skills, let more accomplished people do the work but take the credit".

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
yeahitslikethat 7y ago
Cleverand lazy is best because they find ways to get the job done with the least effort. Biggest reward for the lowest cost.
- mgkimsal 7y ago
  "least effort" just means their own least effort - I've known folks who were happy to let other teams slave away unnecessarily because it optimized their own effort. long term that's a bigger cost for the whole org - short term it's a win for "intelligent but lazy", who may move on to something else in the meantime.
  - yeahitslikethat 7y ago
    That's lazy and stupid. Clever considers all factors in the math.
- vserver1 7y ago
  The quote is not about a Lisp programmer finding the shortest way to solve a problem. It is a quote from a psychopath who tells other people "take that hill" and then lights up a cigar in the officer's club and brags how brave and smart he was.
sowbug 7y ago
Irrelevant, unless your point was that that's not fair, in which case: still irrelevant.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  It's considerably more relevant to high-tech work than a comment from a military commander from 100 years ago. Grit (determination, resilience hard work) is often indicated as the #1 predictor of success - not IQ, and I agree with this. Unless what you're doing is very new, or super sophisticated in which case brilliance is really a key ingredient, give me 'smart, gets along, works hard and accomplishes things' any day over 'brilliant and lazy'.
siidooloo 7y ago
Someone has a job that makes them push a button every 5 minutes. They write a script so they never have to push a butten again. That person is clever and lazy. That is who you want.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  Except this anecdote is not representative of much of anything in the real world. 'Taking the easy' path is not 'clever', it's just a good habit, and there's no reason that this person cannot be hard working as well. Smart and diligent will get you a push button every day instead of one every week. There is no substitute for fairly hard work in most startup environments. There are so many details, so many little things to consider, so much to be done that cannot be replaced with a button.
  - symkat 7y ago
    > Except this anecdote is not representative of much of anything in the real world. It relates well to my experience. At a hosting company I worked for, many of the system admins and developers were promoted from within technical support. Technical support had one very awesome feature I only ever saw at this company -- you had a quota of how many tickets you should complete in a given day. If you completed that number, you could leave and were paid for the full day. If you had 80 tickets to complete and did them in 2 hours, you left. If you had 80 tickets and couldn't complete them, you left after working for 8 hours. You could work from home every other day if you were hitting your quota, and work from home increased your quota by like 10 tickets. Quota numbers were based on some average of your tickets over the last 8 weeks, and for most people were somewhere around 70-100. Categorically, each and every person who was promoted out of tech support had written scripts to fix common issues that were happening and frequently only worked a couple of hours a day while they were in technical support; other times would spend a lot of extra time working out programs to automate their jobs. Looking back at it, I think each of us thought we were getting away with something, but it was noticed and encouraged.
    - sonnyblarney 7y ago

by loap 7y ago

This is true except for the "clever and lazy" part. In reality this should be "intelligent but with no skills, let more accomplished people do the work but take the credit".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

yeahitslikethat 7y ago

Cleverand lazy is best because they find ways to get the job done with the least effort. Biggest reward for the lowest cost.

mgkimsal 7y ago
"least effort" just means their own least effort - I've known folks who were happy to let other teams slave away unnecessarily because it optimized their own effort. long term that's a bigger cost for the whole org - short term it's a win for "intelligent but lazy", who may move on to something else in the meantime.
- yeahitslikethat 7y ago
  That's lazy and stupid. Clever considers all factors in the math.
vserver1 7y ago
The quote is not about a Lisp programmer finding the shortest way to solve a problem. It is a quote from a psychopath who tells other people "take that hill" and then lights up a cigar in the officer's club and brags how brave and smart he was.

sowbug 7y ago

Irrelevant, unless your point was that that's not fair, in which case: still irrelevant.

sonnyblarney 7y ago
It's considerably more relevant to high-tech work than a comment from a military commander from 100 years ago. Grit (determination, resilience hard work) is often indicated as the #1 predictor of success - not IQ, and I agree with this. Unless what you're doing is very new, or super sophisticated in which case brilliance is really a key ingredient, give me 'smart, gets along, works hard and accomplishes things' any day over 'brilliant and lazy'.

siidooloo 7y ago

Someone has a job that makes them push a button every 5 minutes. They write a script so they never have to push a butten again. That person is clever and lazy. That is who you want.

sonnyblarney 7y ago
Except this anecdote is not representative of much of anything in the real world. 'Taking the easy' path is not 'clever', it's just a good habit, and there's no reason that this person cannot be hard working as well. Smart and diligent will get you a push button every day instead of one every week. There is no substitute for fairly hard work in most startup environments. There are so many details, so many little things to consider, so much to be done that cannot be replaced with a button.
- symkat 7y ago
  > Except this anecdote is not representative of much of anything in the real world. It relates well to my experience. At a hosting company I worked for, many of the system admins and developers were promoted from within technical support. Technical support had one very awesome feature I only ever saw at this company -- you had a quota of how many tickets you should complete in a given day. If you completed that number, you could leave and were paid for the full day. If you had 80 tickets to complete and did them in 2 hours, you left. If you had 80 tickets and couldn't complete them, you left after working for 8 hours. You could work from home every other day if you were hitting your quota, and work from home increased your quota by like 10 tickets. Quota numbers were based on some average of your tickets over the last 8 weeks, and for most people were somewhere around 70-100. Categorically, each and every person who was promoted out of tech support had written scripts to fix common issues that were happening and frequently only worked a couple of hours a day while they were in technical support; other times would spend a lot of extra time working out programs to automate their jobs. Looking back at it, I think each of us thought we were getting away with something, but it was noticed and encouraged.
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago