5 ms·

I don't mean to be dumb, but I really don't get it. How does that story answer the question, other than to imply that in a few years, nothing the OP will have d

I don't mean to be dumb, but I really don't get it. How does that story answer the question, other than to imply that in a few years, nothing the OP will have done will matter at all. Sort of sad.

martingordon 16y ago
The impression I get from that little story is that if you don't write code that matters, you don't matter (as an engineer).
jammur 16y ago
I think the point of the story may be that you can't wait for the hard problems to come to you. You have to go and look for them. Ashton waited at the furniture company hoping that one day he would be presented with a problem that would gain him recognition. After years of waiting, he decided he couldn't wait any longer and went to San Francisco to FIND a problem that would get him the recognition he wanted.
- Tycho 16y ago
  You nailed it. I was going to say 'if your work doesn't challenge you, you need to find a new job' or 'don't let your job stand in the way of your development' It's interesting how people came up with different interpretations or 'take home points.' This thread has made me think about the essence of storytelling. I guess it's like - people always do things for reasons - when people do strange things, we tell stories about it - the stories are interesting because we must reconcile the strangeness with the motivation (ie. its interesting because the motivation is not immediately obvious but we know it must be there unless the subject was insane) - the job of fiction is to imagine new 'interesting' cases; the difficulty is keeping it 'true.' The author doesn't have the luxury of relating what did happen, he/she has to project what would happen, sort of like a machine plugging endless variables into an equation until an unusual/unexpected (but still valid) result crops up Someone could teach a high school English class with Joel's SO post
unoti 16y ago
I read it differently, perhaps because I feel so strongly about this idea: do a good job, focus on what's important. If management doesn't appreciate you for that, then it's a terrible place to work. If you're doing a good job and they aren't appreciating it, then you seriously need to gtfo. If you don't, you will rot. Over the years as I've looked around me, I've seen a lot of people stagnating in their jobs. Sometimes it's because of lack of effort from the developer, and sometimes it's because of poor management. But if doing a great job isn't already enough, then maybe the job is a poor fit. The parable in the story touches on both of these issues: trying hard, and the struggle to please management. A third issue that's perhaps more important: you need to find the work fulfilling for your own reasons. Working exclusively for the praise of your superiors is a good way to be unhappy with your employment in most places. So figure that out, or go to a place where the work matters. And buyer beware: there are places even in San Francisco where doing good development work will garner you no notice. I just left such a place.
- blntechie 16y ago
  Think many HNers won't find their life similar to Ashton's. Unfortunately, mine is. At least, the job part is. Honestly, it's not much bad but it looks like it's leading towards the same frustration.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
  focus on what's important. If management doesn't appreciate you for that, then it's a terrible place to work Do you mean focus on what's important to you or what's important to management? I agree that if you focus on what's important to the people you work for and they don't appreciate that, then it's a crappy place to work. But what's important to a developer is often completely irrelevant to the business.
  - unoti 16y ago
    That's a great point. I meant what's important to the company, which hopefully is the same thing as what's important to management. It's funny how thought provoking your question is, though. Because a lot of developers, as you point out, care about far different things for their own reasons. One developer I knew, cared more about everything being 100% as "efficient" as possible before releasing it. She didn't care if things ever got released, really, that didn't matter as much as whether it fit her personal ideas of what's aesthetically ideal. To show you how extreme that was, she spent a week writing a caching layer (in python) using a hashtable + list for a least-recently-used algorithm. When I mentioned she could do this in 2 lines of code talking to memcached, she refused, pointing out how silly it is to talk to an external process with a context switch to look up some data. Who's right and who's wrong? Hard to say. I guess it depends on the context, and what the company is trying to do. I think the answers are different if you're trying to show good, sustainable results for customers without muddying up the code base, versus if you're writing software for lunar rovers.
patio11 16y ago
How does that story answer the question, other than to imply that in a few years, nothing the OP will have done will matter at all. I think the thesis is "If in a few years nothing you have done will matter at all, then go change that even if doing so makes you look like a madman."
tptacek 16y ago
Impressing your boss is a crappy career goal. Even if your boss is amazing.
- duck 16y ago
  I like your version better. I don't know what it is, I use to love reading his stuff for hours, but then one day I just couldn't stand it. Did this happen to anyone else?
  - dkarl 16y ago
    You liked it when you were surprised and thrilled that someone agreed with you in a way that was clearer and more exciting than your own thinking. You stopped liking it when you started wanting something new. Not to take anything away from the value of his writing. It's good to stay engaged and delighted with the fundamentals. If you get bored with the simple things, you'll neglect them and spend all your thinking about novel, peripheral, trivial things that you aren't bored with yet. Making the important things you've known for ten years sparkle and rock again is a valuable contribution.
  - adambyrtek 16y ago
    I had a similar experience. I really enjoyed reading the first collection of Joel's essays, which made me follow his blog. He published some good articles at that time (eg. the law of leaky abstractions) but I changed my mind when the blog evolved into a promotional vehicle for his company. I'm not really interested in the brand of chairs in their office, the fact that they fly interns First Class, or a bug tracker that's nice, but not as unique as he'd like to present it. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently bad about that, but I just lost interest and moved to greener pastures.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    My version is much worse. Without the context of Joel's post, it'd bounce right off you, like all the rest of the banal platitudes you hear about your career. Joel's has a narrative with a protagonist. It doesn't simply say "placating bosses is an ineffective career strategy"; rather, it takes you to the end of the story and begs you to come up with underlying point. That's smart; smarter than I could have done.
tung 16y ago
My face-value interpretation of it is that you don't become a great programmer by impressing your boss.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
A different restatement: If you're standing there at work and you are forced to ask the web what you could do that would make a meaningful difference -- either to your boss, or more importantly to yourself -- go stand someplace else.

I don't mean to be dumb, but I really don't get it. How does that story answer the question, other than to imply that in a few years, nothing the OP will have done will matter at all. Sort of sad.

martingordon 16y ago

The impression I get from that little story is that if you don't write code that matters, you don't matter (as an engineer).

jammur 16y ago

I think the point of the story may be that you can't wait for the hard problems to come to you. You have to go and look for them. Ashton waited at the furniture company hoping that one day he would be presented with a problem that would gain him recognition. After years of waiting, he decided he couldn't wait any longer and went to San Francisco to FIND a problem that would get him the recognition he wanted.

Tycho 16y ago
You nailed it. I was going to say 'if your work doesn't challenge you, you need to find a new job' or 'don't let your job stand in the way of your development' It's interesting how people came up with different interpretations or 'take home points.' This thread has made me think about the essence of storytelling. I guess it's like - people always do things for reasons - when people do strange things, we tell stories about it - the stories are interesting because we must reconcile the strangeness with the motivation (ie. its interesting because the motivation is not immediately obvious but we know it must be there unless the subject was insane) - the job of fiction is to imagine new 'interesting' cases; the difficulty is keeping it 'true.' The author doesn't have the luxury of relating what did happen, he/she has to project what would happen, sort of like a machine plugging endless variables into an equation until an unusual/unexpected (but still valid) result crops up Someone could teach a high school English class with Joel's SO post

unoti 16y ago

I read it differently, perhaps because I feel so strongly about this idea: do a good job, focus on what's important. If management doesn't appreciate you for that, then it's a terrible place to work. If you're doing a good job and they aren't appreciating it, then you seriously need to gtfo. If you don't, you will rot. Over the years as I've looked around me, I've seen a lot of people stagnating in their jobs. Sometimes it's because of lack of effort from the developer, and sometimes it's because of poor management. But if doing a great job isn't already enough, then maybe the job is a poor fit. The parable in the story touches on both of these issues: trying hard, and the struggle to please management. A third issue that's perhaps more important: you need to find the work fulfilling for your own reasons. Working exclusively for the praise of your superiors is a good way to be unhappy with your employment in most places. So figure that out, or go to a place where the work matters. And buyer beware: there are places even in San Francisco where doing good development work will garner you no notice. I just left such a place.

blntechie 16y ago
Think many HNers won't find their life similar to Ashton's. Unfortunately, mine is. At least, the job part is. Honestly, it's not much bad but it looks like it's leading towards the same frustration.
HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
focus on what's important. If management doesn't appreciate you for that, then it's a terrible place to work Do you mean focus on what's important to you or what's important to management? I agree that if you focus on what's important to the people you work for and they don't appreciate that, then it's a crappy place to work. But what's important to a developer is often completely irrelevant to the business.
- unoti 16y ago
  That's a great point. I meant what's important to the company, which hopefully is the same thing as what's important to management. It's funny how thought provoking your question is, though. Because a lot of developers, as you point out, care about far different things for their own reasons. One developer I knew, cared more about everything being 100% as "efficient" as possible before releasing it. She didn't care if things ever got released, really, that didn't matter as much as whether it fit her personal ideas of what's aesthetically ideal. To show you how extreme that was, she spent a week writing a caching layer (in python) using a hashtable + list for a least-recently-used algorithm. When I mentioned she could do this in 2 lines of code talking to memcached, she refused, pointing out how silly it is to talk to an external process with a context switch to look up some data. Who's right and who's wrong? Hard to say. I guess it depends on the context, and what the company is trying to do. I think the answers are different if you're trying to show good, sustainable results for customers without muddying up the code base, versus if you're writing software for lunar rovers.

patio11 16y ago

How does that story answer the question, other than to imply that in a few years, nothing the OP will have done will matter at all. I think the thesis is "If in a few years nothing you have done will matter at all, then go change that even if doing so makes you look like a madman."

tptacek 16y ago

Impressing your boss is a crappy career goal. Even if your boss is amazing.

duck 16y ago
I like your version better. I don't know what it is, I use to love reading his stuff for hours, but then one day I just couldn't stand it. Did this happen to anyone else?
- dkarl 16y ago
  You liked it when you were surprised and thrilled that someone agreed with you in a way that was clearer and more exciting than your own thinking. You stopped liking it when you started wanting something new. Not to take anything away from the value of his writing. It's good to stay engaged and delighted with the fundamentals. If you get bored with the simple things, you'll neglect them and spend all your thinking about novel, peripheral, trivial things that you aren't bored with yet. Making the important things you've known for ten years sparkle and rock again is a valuable contribution.
- adambyrtek 16y ago
  I had a similar experience. I really enjoyed reading the first collection of Joel's essays, which made me follow his blog. He published some good articles at that time (eg. the law of leaky abstractions) but I changed my mind when the blog evolved into a promotional vehicle for his company. I'm not really interested in the brand of chairs in their office, the fact that they fly interns First Class, or a bug tracker that's nice, but not as unique as he'd like to present it. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently bad about that, but I just lost interest and moved to greener pastures.
- tptacek 16y ago
  My version is much worse. Without the context of Joel's post, it'd bounce right off you, like all the rest of the banal platitudes you hear about your career. Joel's has a narrative with a protagonist. It doesn't simply say "placating bosses is an ineffective career strategy"; rather, it takes you to the end of the story and begs you to come up with underlying point. That's smart; smarter than I could have done.

tung 16y ago

My face-value interpretation of it is that you don't become a great programmer by impressing your boss.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

A different restatement: If you're standing there at work and you are forced to ask the web what you could do that would make a meaningful difference -- either to your boss, or more importantly to yourself -- go stand someplace else.