20 ms·

The dispassionate developer

• Lapsa 6y ago
  Mark is awesome.
  • ofrzeta 6y ago
    He seems like a nice guy but I find that book on Dependency Injection a bit tedious.
• zabzonk 6y ago
  Totally agree about "The passion ethos" - nothing gets up my nose more people who claim to be passionate about things that it really isn't possible or sensible to be, and who don't seem to know the meaning of the word, but just use it because it is expected of them, or they think it is.
  • not_knuth 6y ago
    The more people use it this way, the broader the acceptance of that usage becomes, the more often you will encounter people who will apply the argument you provided to your usage of the word. - yours sincerely, the descriptivists of this world
• agloeregrets 6y ago
  I'm betting on this article being controversial here somewhat. The point on OSS is hilariously true though. Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? OSS is great for almost everyone, don't get me wrong, but in whole, the largest tech companies in the world have gotten an entire community to test, fix, and develop software for them at zero dollars. Small devs can make some use of it, but the gains mostly go to FB, Google, MS, and more. Those OSS contributors who believe their work is bettering the community based on the (entirely moral good) concept of Free and OSS who have had their house gaslit against them do not get paid for their work that the large companies gain from. I almost feel like that for-profit companies of a certain scale should be charged a reasonable licence to use OSS software and that money should be re-distributed. I know there is GitHub Sponsorships but now that MS runs that, well, there went that. Large companies are parasites that have zombified OSS with cute "X <3s OSS" icons and marketing. Beyond that, the bit on passion being a weakness is incredibly important. I have been mulling that over the last few years in America. Extreme political movements tend to cater to a popular passion that they can then bend to their will (such as religion) that they then try to tie their movement to it. (E.g. "You are not a [religion/passion here] if you support [political opponent here]", even when the usurper's agenda is not clearly aligned to the religion.)
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    > Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? Virtually every tech startup or company makes use of open source at every level. We all benefit. There’s no need to be cynical because big companies are also benefiting.
    • agloeregrets 6y ago
      The point I'm making is that large companies benefit on a scale much much larger than others. Facebook isn't just gaining from OSS because they can use other's repos, they are gaining because they can have others fix and build their own repos. The Gameplan is to gain from the community, not contribute. Sure, React is nice and fine for the community, great framework...but the intent is not to help the community in the first place.
      • the_local_host 6y ago
        As far as I know the goal of free software was never "free for those who pull their weight by contributing." It simply meant free to run, change, and distribute, without any obligations except that the right for others to do the same had to be preserved.
      • villasv 6y ago
        > The point I'm making is that large companies benefit on a scale much much larger than others. They do benefit immensely, but no by having "others fix and build" their own repos. You're overestimating the source code contributions and underestimating the cost to manage a hugely popular project. > The Gameplan is to gain from the community, not contribute. This is just silly. The """gameplan""" is to contribute and AND grow a community, which benefits everyone. Does it benefit more the company than the community as a whole? Maybe, but that's petty reasoning.
        • BlargMcLarg 6y ago
          I don't necessarily agree with "The Gameplan". Yet the inverse, the idea that the majority of companies in a position to contribute to the communities they utilize, is just as much something I have yet to see. If anything, the overwhelming attitude I see in companies is "this is our secret sauce, and we don't want to let go of it because a competitor might use it and one-up us", while making liberal use of e.g. open source Unix distros and open source libraries. Confidentially clauses. Even many companies who do eventually release parts of their secret sauce (e.g. Google, Facebook) first secure their financial and tech positions before they do so. In other words, when they do release their secret sauce, the good will they get far outweighs the risk of a competitor improving on top of their secret sauce and getting a significant chunk of their market.
• Derpdiherp 6y ago
  Maybe it's the jobs that I've worked, or the country I'm in ( UK ). But I've really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV's. Every company I've worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth. I wouldn't think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a family, I value my free time. I spend work time growing my skill set as it's required, anything else I do is rarely related. I have a feeling that there's a silent majority of developers such as myself, that do enjoy programming and have a "passion" for it, but do not let this passion dissuade them from family time, or having more varied down time. I think for a lot of people it's a dangerous game to be spending every waking moment working for a company, then spending your down time scraping together stuff for open source contributions etc. I salute those that can and do though.
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    On the hiring side, it’s rare to see someone come through with significant OSS contributions. A small bug fix here or there is about the most I see from 90% of resumes. Every once in a while we see someone with a lot of open source contributions, or even full leadership of a popular project. These people would really prefer if we believed that OSS contributions and GitHub profiles replaced resumes or CVs, because it’s where they shine. Unfortunately, doing so would exclude many great hires who have done a lot of great work at private companies that doesn’t show up on their GitHub. We’ve also had trouble hiring prolific OSS contributors who spent their days working on OSS contributions instead of doing their job. One candidate wanted their contract to state that they could spend half of their paid time working on their OSS project. We passed. In my experience, anyone claiming to have a single dimension credential preference for hiring (usually GitHub portfolio, Ivy League education, ex-FAANG) is simply hiring for people who look like themselves. They’re not a good fit for unbiased hiring.
    • notsuoh 6y ago
      Taking that a step further, we often actively discourage looking at OSS contributions during resume review for the same reason we don't offer take home interview assignments: it's biased against people who don't have a whole lot of extra time at home. When we have done either of the above, the singles who work part time have a bunch of time to perfect their work suddenly have a lot to show over the single parents who may be working full time or more. I say "often" because OSS contributions can still be an indicator of something, but it's not really clear what. Maybe it indicates drive to contribute to OSS, maybe technical ability, maybe no hobbies or commitments outside their day job. In our experience it's often the latter, but even so, it's biased against people who don't have the time to contribute even if they desired to do so. So we typically just stick with the resume for actual experience and college coursework, if any, but not the college itself. Using these heuristics we've managed to build a pretty strong pipeline of people with all backgrounds of education or experience.
• alexashka 6y ago
  It's interesting to read blogs, they almost universally make these leaps of faith that x implies y without noticing that they do it and spend the rest of the time operating on these faith-based assumptions. Let me give a couple of examples from this blog: Software devs had anti-capitalist values -> free software -> unintended consequences -> customer is the product Do you see where the leap of faith occurred? The last arrow. If you're young and you don't know, when app stores on mobile phones started and apps got built, most of them weren't free. When facebook got started, it was free, but it had nothing to do with anti-capitalist values, etc. Another example: employers want people who are passionate -> do open source to prove your passion Where's the leap of faith? The initial premise. Let me give another example that'll perhaps illustrate: when women get polled about what they look for in a man, they say: sense of humor. Does anyone take that seriously? No, right? We know people are full of shit and say one thing and mean another? Well, not people who write blogs or comment on twitter a lot of the time! So much of blogging and twittering, is taking false premises or helping start new ones (first example). Guys/gals, I can forgive people who have never heard of A implies B in their lives. You have, please check that A = true and A actually implies B, every step of the way. Apply mental-tests to your own thinking - it's great that you get software to compile, please get your view of the world to compile to a level a random stranger on the internet can't tear apart within 10 seconds.
  • kubanczyk 6y ago
    Not sure why you got the downvotes. The article in its entirety is a grand non sequitur. Observations. Rambling. "I don't know. Be dispassionate."
    • Der_Einzige 6y ago
      As usual, lightly downvoted comments on HN usually have more value than comments which get upvoted. The community has poor choices about how it votes here.
• crazypython 6y ago
  We need to find better business models for FLOSS software.
• giantg2 6y ago
  Working in the industry kills one's passion. It did for me.
  • aphextron 6y ago
    Pretty much. At this point it's just a paycheck, and such an easy (large) one that I can't possibly justify bothering to find any other line of work. Even if doing something else would make me happier, ultimately work is just work and optimizing for the least effort/highest reward is really the only criteria for it IMO. It leaves more room to find your meaning and passion in life outside of what you have to do to pay the bills.
    • giantg2 6y ago
      Mine is frustrating and not a large paycheck at all. I was just browsing job posting this morning, but it's depressing. There's nothing interesting out there that pays more, and my skill set is not really in demand.
      • the_only_law 6y ago
        I can usually find interesting stuff, but nothing I’d ever be qualified for. Can’t speak to what most of it pays, but if I had to guess: more than I’m making now, less than I could be making theoretically.
        • giantg2 6y ago
          This area is mostly boring business CRUD. I have the qualification problem too. Nobody wants to train, and nobody needs FileNet or Neoxam resources.
          • the_only_law 6y ago
            Ah yeah, generally I look at jobs all over the place. It’s still relatively rare to see something I’d qualify as “interesting” but I do see them. Typically when I do find them they require significant professional experience within the respective domain. The worst possible example I can think of are any jobs dealing with scientific software where it’s made clear they want scientists who can program a little not programmers who know a bit of science.
• SamuelAdams 6y ago
  > Most people don't heed advice given for free, but if they pay dearly for it, they tend to pay attention. 100% this. I've seen consultants get paid $250 an hour to simply listen to what the team is saying and regurgitate that to management. But it's more trusted than their own employees because the consultant is "independent".
  • Tabular-Iceberg 6y ago
    I thought I could use this to my advantage and game the system. I convinced management we needed to hire a prestigious consultant to get us out of the tight spot we were in. They were absolutely ecstatic about this great visionary I had brought in and all the genius insights he had (which was predictably just what the team had been saying for moths). But it still came back to bite me in the end. When the consultant was paid and gone, there was suddenly no time anymore to act on any of the advice. It was all back to to the perpetual "just make this one simple feature" cycle, but the most insulting thing was hearing a twisted version of the consultant's advice used as ammunition against the team, questioning its competence.
    • Viliam1234 6y ago
      > the most insulting thing was hearing a twisted version of the consultant's advice used as ammunition against the team, questioning its competence. That's the advantage of having an expert that is no longer there. You can make him agree with whatever you want. Once there was an expert invited to solve a problem at a company I worked for. Towards the end of his short visit, we met in a kitchen and talked for a while. I asked him what he thought about the problem we had, and he told me his opinion. After he left, there was a meeting where the managers told us what the expert thought. It was almost the opposite of what he told me. Was he telling different conclusions to different people? Or were the managers just lying? No way to find out, of course.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• rektide 6y ago
  > For reasons that are complicated and that I don't fully understand, the software development community in the eighties and nineties developed a culture of anti-capitalism and liberal values that put technology on a pedestal for its own sake. Open source good; commercial software bad. Free software good; commercial software bad. I think a lot of techies believe there is massive untapped potential in information technology, and to some degree that the commercialism occludes humanity from gaining a fair, reasonable, and developing perspective on how computation and communication happens in the modern world. We see the world not as being well served by the software and services about, but as being made helpless, as suffering real pain, and never being given the chance to understand or grapple with issues we encounter. The current system is not a fair shake, and does not permit the formation of human will. Computing technology is too amazing, humans have too much awesome potential, to be bounded by such a finite fixed tragic end, as all this. It's long been time to stop playing with shadows on the wall, & embarking on a more honest means to make accessible the tiniest yet most amazing empowering bicycle-of-the-mind creation of our era is a journey we feel deeply moved to start upon.
• dfilppi 6y ago
  Not seeing why employers are to blame. Developers are the ones that decided their work is worthless.
  • ARandomerDude 6y ago
    There's a feedback effect where those developers get hired and then become the hiring managers (employers). So the line between developer and employer is gray enough for some blame to lie on both sides.
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    > their work is worthless So, I'm old enough to remember a time before widespread open source and even before the world-wide-web itself. I was paid to work on whatever my employer thought they could sell, but not necessarily what I was interested in learning more about. When Linux came out, for example, I thought that going through it and maybe even working on it would be a great way to learn more about operating systems in a way that I would never get a chance to do professionally. Being curious about something isn't necessarily declaring it "worthless". That said, I agree with the author that it's scummy to demand it of employees (although I've never seen that myself).
• mwcampbell 6y ago
  This post makes some good points. But I think there's another extreme we need to be careful to avoid. In a world full of workers who are emotionally and morally disengaged, just doing what they're told for a paycheck, there's plenty of room for exploitation of a different kind. Perhaps the best model for software development is a small company with a few cofounders who are passionate about what they're working on, who charge a fair price for their software, and who work smarter in every possible way (yes, including making full use of open source) to minimize the amount of hiring they have to do. When they do hire, they treat their employees fairly and don't expect too much of them. But then when I'm presented with, say, a security questionnaire, I wonder if developing software that meets today's standards is inevitably the sole domain of big companies. (I suspect many other developers feel the same way about my own pet cause, accessibility.)
  • kodah 6y ago
    > In a world full of workers who are emotionally and morally disengaged, just doing what they're told for a paycheck I don't this is true of software. I live on the West Coast and SWEs are by far some of the most vocal and aggressive voices in a crowd. They seem highly engaged and constantly channeling emotion for what they want. That said, it's a recent trend. When I came into software the attitudes were much more laid back. I'd prefer a return to this.
• FpUser 6y ago
  >"...Would you like a cool job in tech? Show me your open-source portfolio." I do not know what constitutes "cool job" but I've been developing for longer than many lived and not once was I asked about my open source contributions. When I do work for clients it is nearly always to design and create a product. I have a "portfolio" of such products with appropriate references and this is what I show to clients and it seems to work very well. Also working on product makes me interested way more in the design / inventive aspects. Programming itself is just a tool for me to express my ideas. This makes me a "dispassionate programmer". I can appreciate good tools / languages /tech / etc that make me complete the task easier but once more - they're just tools. Last thing. I do not have any "open source" contributions. I am not proud of it but do not feel guilty either.
• ofrzeta 6y ago
  I was at one of the first "DevOps Days" conferences in Hamburg where we sat in a huge circle and everyone had to introduce themselves and say what they are "passionate" about. Although I am a little bit more interested in the craft than an average 9to5 programmer I couldn't bring myself to use that phrase and could only articulate what I am "interested in". I am not a native English speaker so maybe my feelings around the meaning of "passion" are distorted but I didn't get how you could be passionate about continuous integration.
  • josephorjoe 6y ago
    Oh, your understanding of what "passionate" means in English is perfect. "Passionate" has nothing to do with taking satisfaction in performing an interesting job well and being fairly compensated for your efforts and having some appreciation for the opportunities you are given. It has everything to do with feeling such strong emotions about something that you make decisions guided by emotion rather than logic. Although I suspect the never ending abuse of the word will eventually change the meaning to actually mean "moderately enthusiastic about and interested in". Sort of like how in English "awesome" has been degraded from "that inspires both fear and wonder that I do not normally experience" to "that pleases me somewhat".
  • burnished 6y ago
    Passion refers to a level of intensity, desire, or obsession. It frequently is used to talk about romantic love but can refer to other things. You were probably right to use the word 'interested' over 'passionate', but if there is a some one who is staying up late working on and thinking about continuous integration then they could say they were passionate about it. There has probably been at least a couple dry technical topics that made you feel passionate in the same way some one could be passionate about CI. I wouldn't call being passionate about something to be typical though so its a pretty weird question to ask a circle of people.
• lordnacho 6y ago
  "As you start to ponder the implied ethos, the stranger it gets. Would you like engineers to be passionate as they design new bridges? Would you like a surgeon to be passionate as she operates on you? Would you like judges to be passionate as they pass sentence on your friend?" I'm not sure what exactly he means by passionate, but I do know a surgeon who spends time reading and lecturing about the history of surgery. I'm sure there are judges who take pride in understanding more than just how to do their current jobs too. And for a fact you will run into engineers, both the traditional and software kinds, who care to get some context related to their professions. I also spent a fair bit of time when I got a trading job reading up on how the market had evolved. Does that qualify as passion? Now, there's of course a difference between demonstrating that you care about the larger context of your work, and doing work for free. I think the only place where we associate passion with no money tends to be the arts, the common trope being that person who acts or paints but needs a job to pay the bills. Then clearly they aren't doing it for the money. But of course you can do something for money while also caring deeply about it. Overall he's right though, you should never let someone talk you into a position where you need to demonstrate that you want to work for free. If you are in the village play because you like it, and that play somehow ends up on Netflix and makes a gazillion dollars, you should get a sensible piece of it. Likewise if someone is proposing you help with some software that might end up being worth a lot, you should get a piece.
  • jkingsbery 6y ago
    I had a similar reaction when comparing software engineering to other professions. My brother is a lawyer, and he has to do continuing legal education (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_legal_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_legal_education). I have friends who are doctors that go to (and sometimes speak at) conferences. I'm not sure that we software engineers need to spend all our free time on leetcode and answering StackOverflow questions, but reading a book about something outside of normal work hours seems like pretty tame stakes.
  • majormajor 6y ago
    I've seen a doctor who didn't seem to care, as well as one that did. One just tried to throw prescriptions at any problems I took to him, and the other one was more interested in root causes and the sum picture of my overall health. I definitely want the passionate one there, all other things about their knowledge and potential competence being equal.
• kodah 6y ago
  I do like when teams will ask for side projects (if I have them) or OSS projects. Software has an inherent bias towards people from prestigious schools (but especially CS programs) and enforces that bias via heavy algorithm testing that is otherwise mostly not needed in software. Not to say it's never needed, but the 90% use case does not involve knowing how to do binary search by hand. As I built my knowledge around algorithms to adhere to certain software engineers biases, being able to sub that in for actual work was pivotal to my career. It's surprising to see people outright excluding that as an option in the interviewing process. As my career has gone on longer and I've overcame the algorithm bias, my OSS contributions mostly dissipated. I do continue to work on side projects to learn but I continually encourage businesses to promote learning during work time. Bringing back read only Friday is a great way to do this and generally maintain velocity. I don't have any data for you, just my experiences.
  • whatshisface 6y ago
    >Software has an inherent bias towards people from prestigious schools and enforces that bias via heavy algorithm testing that is otherwise mostly not needed in software. Can't any school teach the same algorithms material? It's not exactly secret. Algorithms interviews seem more like surreptitious IQ tests than anything else.
    • kodah 6y ago
      Good question. I'm a drop out (a byproduct of paying for school while working in 2009) and it's been difficult to put my life on pause to go back. College grads get the luxury of having seen algorithms before and being taught how to negotiate and identify them in school with a fair amount of practice. I'm sure everyone studies for interviews, but for someone like me that study also often coincides with learning something for the first time. The industry now has a term for people like me, which is people from "non-traditional backgrounds". Many systems engineers, QA engineers, frontend engineers, etc will often be placed in this category.
      • whatshisface 6y ago
• auganov 6y ago
  The flip-side of this is a lot of open source software is written for its own end. I've learned to be very careful about assuming something is a good package just because it seems to have nice looking docs and a bit of popularity. You will often find something with a TOOOON of different features and switches, but upon closer inspection it turns out all of it is subpar. And I don't mean it in a perfectionist sense, just bad in a way that it's unlikely it has ever been used and iterated on in production. When hiring one should be careful not to foster this kind of culture inhouse.
• wccrawford 6y ago
  It's been a while since I've applied for a new job, but when I was, they might have asked about OSS contributions, but I don't think they really cared. It was just a way to better judge my ability. Likewise, when we interview people, we ask if they have a github repo or other portfolio, but it's about their code, not about OSS. I don't care if it's private code or OSS, so long as I can use it to judge their skill level. And if they don't have anything like that, it's not a mark against them... It's just harder to be confident in their ability. We do a short test, but any test that actually tests their abilities would be too time-consuming (and thus expense) to give to more than a handful or candidates that we were already pretty sure of.
• commandlinefan 6y ago
  Quite a few years ago, I was approached by my then-employer who asked me if I programmed in my spare time outside of work, and I said I did. He said, "great, I have this outside software that I sell, and I'd like somebody to work on it outside of work hours, but I don't want to pay you to work on it." He was disappointed to learn that I wasn't as "passionate" as he had hoped.
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    Glad to hear that they're an ex-employer. I 100% believe that conversation happened, but I 0% understand why people think that would be remotely reasonable for you to agree.
• danans 6y ago
  > ... employers want employees who are passionate about their craft. > ... I'd like such people to care about their vocation, but I'd prefer that they keep a cool head and make as rational decisions as possible. > Why should programmers be passionate? While I agree with the gist of the article, the author should realize that "passionate" as used in this context is effectively synonymous with "cares", and is only used because the word "care" has lost most of its impact over time, being mostly associated with the phrase "doesn't care". This is common linguistic phenomenon.
  • nxc18 6y ago
    100% this. I don’t expect you to go crazy over programming, but the gulf between passionate programmers and just-collect-the-paycheck programmers is extreme. Just-collect-the-paycheck programmers are useful and necessary, but a team composed exclusively of uncaring engineers is pretty much doomed to fail. Lightbulbs are flashing for me right now because I’ve never really thought about it like this, despite caring a lot about passion. In the teams I’ve been on that have over-performed (aka released quality software on schedule), there was always at least one or two (sometimes the majority) engineers who actually cared. Cared enough to push back when we tried to skimp on standards compliance. Cared enough to upstream a fix to a library we use. Cared enough to notice patterns in problems we had and write internal articles about how to avoid those problems. I’ve also been on teams of (primarily European, as the author points out, the culture is very different) engineers who really are just collecting a paycheck. As long as they keep working, it’s really not a big deal if the product ships on time, or a year late. It doesn’t really matter if the product meets customer needs well, because we know they will buy it anyway. It doesn’t really matter if your colleague knows enough to get their work done. And if I see a new problem the team encounters, I’m certainly not going to learn anything to solve it, or assist a colleague who does; job descriptions are there for a reason. I guess a good test is the “job description” test. Does an engineer ever say “that’s not in my job description” and refuse to do needed work (note this is very different than pointing out there would be someone better equipped to do it, if that is the case) to the detriment of the team? Does an engineer not bristle when someone else brings up “the job description”? If so, that’s a pretty sure sign that they don’t care about their work, which means they don’t care about your team’s success.
• titanomachy 6y ago
  As an engineer in the US who's worked at three very different companies, I haven't seen any of the things that this article is complaining about. While most applications had a space to link your GitHub account, I've never had the sense that a company expected me to have open-source contributions. My co-workers don't do open-source work in their free time, or if they do they don't talk about it. The author also claims that employers don't invest in training and expect us to do it on our own time. Every employer I've had has been thrilled when I used my paid hours to study and master technology relevant to the job. Although it's true that I've never really had much formal "training", no one ever told me to stop learning stuff and just do my job. I'm sure I've been very fortunate, but I'm curious why my experience differs so much from the author's.
  • belval 6y ago
    Same experience for me, when interviewing if the candidate is a new grad and has a nice GitHub profile and I can actually look at the code it's great (otherwise what I am hiring on?), but I never passed anyone for not having GitHub contributions. Likewise, unless I just stop doing my job and flat out refuse to do my tasks I never had issues with learning new technologies on the job. If anything I got congratulated for showing initiative in exploring ways to better our current stack.
  • aeroheim 6y ago
    From the US as well (Austin specifically) and I think there are some grains of truth in what the author describes, but it's not clear whether the author's viewpoint is influenced by the developers that requested paid mentorship or if it's entirely his own. I've seen what he mentions in regards to self-improvement. Management under a large engineering company I was previously at would encourage self-learning and improvement, but disregarded it the moment deadlines became a concern or if you requested resources for it (e.g budget for tech conferences). They had a lot of long-time employees who were content with mediocre salaries (due to family, complacency, poor marketability/atrophied skills, etc.), so they literally had no incentive to invest in meaningful training for employees. In regards to the focus on open-source contributions that he claims, I've found that the credibility and clout that comes with being a prolific contributor really only matter online. It most definitely helps you get your resume in the door, but you're still expected to whiteboard some bullshit like everyone else when it comes to interviews. I'd imagine that the majority of applicants have zero open source contributions and that the companies not only expect but are also okay with that. That was the definitely the experience I had back when I had did interviewing for my team at least. Of course, it could be possible that what he's describing is more of a trend going on in Europe or Denmark than the US. But I think he has some hits and some misses with his takes.
• sdevonoes 6y ago
  I have passion for programming. I do software engineering just for the money.
• LennyPenny 6y ago
  regarding the OSS points: The only reason that Google, Fb, etc can freeload off of OSS is that we abandoned going for viral licenses (ie AGPLv3) The big corps simply will not use such OSS because they would have to also make their code open. More wide adoption of these licenses would encourage a more healthy relationship between corps and OSS devs. It's easy to imagine that in a world where essential low level software and useful libraries are AGPLed, the current big corps would probably not be as big as they are today. Instead more transparent organizations with more sustainable business models would gain a real advantage.
  • ofrzeta 6y ago
    You should not forget that they open sourced a massive amount of code themselves.
• lambda_obrien 6y ago
  I used to be someone who did programming outside of work, but I don't have time with a kid, and further I don't really want to spend time fixing anything electronic any longer. I just use a console for gaming, my computer sits unused and I only use my work pc for work, so I barely even go on the internet. Parenthood takes a lot of time, and I fear I'll never be able to find a new job because i don't have time to jump through interview hoops. I'll certainly never work at Google or wherever, because they interview for so long and have so many requirements that it's impossible for me to even think about applying. The tech interview process is openly hostile to parents.
• aynyc 6y ago
  > What can you do, then, if you want to stand out from the crowd? How do you advance your software development career? I'm sure there are other ways, but one sure way that I have personally used and been fairly successful. Understand your boss and make your boss look good. If you don't understand your boss by year 2, it's time to move on.
• Tabular-Iceberg 6y ago
  > If you're tired of working with legacy code without tests, most of your suggestions for improvements will be met by a shrug. We don't have time for that now. It's more important to deliver value to the customer. This is what bothers me the most. Whether it's about tests or something else. Even clean slate "let's get everything right this time" projects degenerate into legacy code within weeks with this mindset. The "It's more important to deliver value to the customer" line is especially insulting, since it's not as if the developers are trying to sabotage the delivery of value by writing tests or sanitising input or whatever the conflict is about. We know that high quality code is faster and cheaper to build than low quality software, but it's counter-intuitive to most managers. And you need sympathetic managers to get the software right. Business rules are rarely clear, orthogonal or consistent. Which is not actually a problem for humans, but until we have artificial general intelligence, it is an insurmountable one for computers. But unsympathetic managers will not want to have long, uncomfortable conversations about deducing what they actually need from what they think they want. So developers are instead forced turn messy rules into messy code as best as they can, and put out fires whenever they break out, which they will all the time. And perhaps the most insidious thing of all, spending all the time putting out fires means they don't get real world experience they need to build a robust system on time. If managers let them try once it would just make them look incompetent. And if they quit, their experience putting out fires will be worth nothing to companies who actually value proper workmanship. Their only option would be to join another death march company. I think this the biggest reason why most software, especially enterprise software, is so bad, and isn't likely to improve in the foreseeable future.
  • majormajor 6y ago
    I have seen this be the fault of developers as much or more than management - even for that "let's get everything right this time" sort of project, devs who interpret that as "let's build a beautiful intricate machine that does exactly what we want it to today" are fare more common than devs who build something that will be able to evolve for tomorrow's needs. Management rarely is involved or interfering there, when a dev or dev team decides to abstract over messy rules to make something "clean" - but in the process just encodes the messiness deeper, and in a harder-to-change way. A dev who's also focused on "how can I deliver value to the customer" is really the only person who can make the right choices there, because the code has to be designed to make sure future valuable changes can be made, vs designed for a specific "snapshot" of specs. And yeah, it often becomes a cycle, where management doesn't trust devs to build systems that won't suck, because devs haven't shown they can build systems that won't suck, because they're constantly just fighting the old systems that suck instead of having good training/experience building ones that don't... but I can't put that on non-technical management. We don't want non-technical management trying to tell us how to build a system, we just have to get better at it ourselves. You can do that by working on a bunch of broken systems, but you have to be thoughtful about it, and reflect on what you learn, and not just be distracted by "ooh, new shiny framework will make this better!"
• akdas 6y ago
  Last year, I wrote about the prisoner's dilemma of training your employees[0]. As Mark points out, many companies don't invest because they don't find it valuable. What I tried to point out was that big tech companies already _are_ investing heavily in their talent, and especially as these companies start pulling in less experienced people to train up, companies that don't invest are going to fall behind. I don't know how convincing that argument is, but hopefully realizing how much investment the big tech companies are putting into their talent is eye-opening for some people. (Note: I talked about investing in junior employees, but the idea applies to all your employees.) [0] https://hiringfor.tech/2020/09/07/the-prisoners-dilemma-of-training-your-employees.html https://hiringfor.tech/2020/09/07/the-prisoners-dilemma-of-t...
• MrPowers 6y ago
  This article doesn't align with my experience of what I've observed. > I don't think that it's in our interest to be passionate, but it is in employers' interest Meh, I'm into some technologies just cause they fascinate me. Benefits employers, but benefits me too cause I get paid to pursue my passion. > Not only are passionate people expected to work for free, they're also easier to manipulate Passionate ppl in the Spark world make tons of money and strike me as geniuses that'd be hard to manipulate. > Some open-source maintainers have created crucial software that runs everywhere Yes > Companies make millions off that free software, while maintainers are often left with an increasing support burden and no money Maybe some. Spark creators went on to build a successful company (Databricks) that'll be going public soon. Companies seem to be throwing money at top open source devs in the data world.
• vemv 6y ago
  I'm shamelessly passionate about software development, but I don't project it being a big part of my life forever and ever. For example with covid, I have fewer other possible hobbies so doubling down in this specific interest is both fun, and a sound investment. And also age/trajectory matters. I'm at year 10 of my journey, probably around year 20 I'll have completely different priorities in my life.
• Tabular-Iceberg 6y ago
  > Open source good; commercial software bad. Free software good; commercial software bad. I don't get it, is he being facetious or am I missing the point in some other way? To anyone in tech those are obviously orthogonal concepts. There is commercial FOSS, commercial proprietary software, non-commercial FOSS, non-commercial proprietary software. And if you think commercial software is the problem, as some communist hard-liners that I've talked to, the only logical conclusion is to do as they did, vehemently oppose FOSS licenses since you're not allowed to restrict commercial use of it. Of course the F camp emphasise the personal values while the OS camp emphasise the commercial opportunities. But I don't think RMS was trying to "stick it to the man", he was just trying to print some listings. And big businesses like Microsoft have sensibly come to the same conclusion, that sometimes it's nice to have that same freedom. > The idea of free software, for example, has led to a software economy where you, the user, are no longer the customer, but the product. I don't see how it has led to that at all. It's just different, not as polished, but if you have the know-how you can fix things. You gain some, you lose some.
  • musicale 6y ago
    I read "commercial" as "proprietary."
• kjgkjhfkjf 6y ago
  It's a fallacy to claim that developers are hired substantially on the basis of their open-source portfolios. This is very rare IME. It's also somewhat of a fallacy to claim that open-source software is the domain of hobbyists. A lot of open-source software nowadays is produced by paid programmers as part of their day jobs.
• chad_strategic 6y ago
  I was a dispassionate, disenfranchised, dejected and defeated developer. Then I quit. Now I'm happy.
  • burntoutfire 6y ago
    Same here, my last day will be on May 7th! Let the happiness ensue! I have around 45 years of living expenses saved up, so it will be a REALLY long time till I need a job again.
• allenu 6y ago
  At some point in your career, I think you realize that you have to separate yourself and your passion from your work, especially if you are working for someone else[1]. There needs to be a clear delineation between what you believe is the right thing from a "passionate developer" standpoint and what is appropriate for a business. Often, what is appropriate for a business, and your survival in said business, is to go along with what the business wants to do, even if it's not what is ideal. If you don't, I think you'll always be at odds with something and will probably get burnt out trying to fight political battles. There are battles here and there worth fighting, of course, but you have to be okay with non-ideal solutions. To me, that has been a challenge over my career and I've finally come to terms with it and I find my mood has improved quite a bit in the workplace as a result, albeit with a small death of my youthful idealism. However, now I try to use my passion in side projects, not to improve my CV, but just for fun. Interestingly enough, even idealism doesn't always work out there. [1] I suppose it's possible to maintain your passion in the workplace and keep pushing ahead and doing even bigger and bigger things within a business (leveling up in the process, I'm sure), but I think to do so requires a lot of strength and endurance that a lot of us just don't have.
• musicale 6y ago
  > Some open-source maintainers have created crucial software that runs everywhere. Companies make millions off that free software, while maintainers are often left with an increasing support burden and no money. Pretty much this. See also: https://www.wired.com/story/open-source-coders-few-tired/ https://www.wired.com/story/open-source-coders-few-tired/
• johncessna 6y ago
  > You're expected to 'contribute' to open source software. Why? Because employers want employees who are passionate about their craft. Like others have mentioned, I don't really see this in the industry. That said, I think it's less a quest for the 'passionate' developer and more a quest for a good employee who can contribute to the task at hand. Companies don't want 'passion' they want someone who will work hard on their product and be a great return on investment for the company. How do you measure that? That's hard. Detecting it in a 1-4 hour interview is also hard. Or, they can take the easy way out, generalize, and look for markers of that behavior, such as working an open source project 'job' in addition to their daily job.
• swader999 6y ago
  I've taken pay cuts to work with people I consider good mentors over the years. I don't see it as any kind of a detraction.
• jancsika 6y ago
  I'm going to follow the author's line of reasoning. Please tell me what I'm missing: 1. For reasons that are complicated and that I don't fully understand, Americans smile at each other. 2. Ad agencies show pictures of humans smiling at each other in order to exploit humans into buying products they don't need. 3. Americans should stop smiling.
• jbandela1 6y ago
  >As you start to ponder the implied ethos, the stranger it gets. Would you like engineers to be passionate as they design new bridges? Would you like a surgeon to be passionate as she operates on you? Would you like judges to be passionate as they pass sentence on your friend? The answer is yes. In terms of engineers and passion, I would bet that an engineer who is passionate about designing bridges would be one that would have studied past designs and failures of bridges in great detail, be up on the latest benefits and issues in material science, who was aware of special considerations for weather or location. I would also bet that engineer would be able to design a better bridge than one that was just doing it purely because it paid money. As for surgeons and passion, when I was in neurosurgery, the best surgeons I knew were passionate about their work. They were constantly reading the latest journals, attending conferences, going to courses to hone and refine their skill. They were also constantly evaluating themselves to see if they could do things better. Then there were others who were just coasting on what they knew worked in the past. I would rather go to a passionate surgeon any day. As for judges, I would like a judge who is passionate about the law and justice. I want a judge who not only knows what the current law says, but who has researched and knows how it came to be, the various precedents and circumstances that law has been applied. I want one who has contributed review articles to law journals, versus a judge who quickly does a Google or Lexis-Nexus search about the law to supplement their knowledge from 15 years ago in law school before they render their judgement.
  • b3kart 6y ago
    There's "passion" and there's "professionalism". I would categorise many of the activities you mention under the latter. Passion isn't the only reason to try to be good at what you do and get ahead. Pride, ambition, a sense of responsibility, etc. are all good reasons too, and it's easier to associate them with surgeons and judges. "Passion" is just a bit of a weird word to use when it comes to such work, maybe because it's often associated with creative endeavours.
• nickjj 6y ago
  I like the article overall but I'm not sold on the passion ethos section as it was written. The author hints that they wouldn't want a surgeon who is passionate because they should be making rational decisions. But IMO passion isn't all about making an on the spot emotional decision without thinking things through. It's about their willingness to continue learning and advancing their craft because they have the motivation and passion to do so without getting burnt out. They do it because deep down it's truly what they love doing. So in the surgeon example, would you rather want the surgeon who clocks in and out for the day and that's it while doing the bare minimum to keep their license? Or the surgeon who puts in similar hours but also decides to speak at conferences / universities afterwards and is keeping up with everything while evolving their practice? Perhaps they do more work (surgeries), but not putting in more hours. Maybe they specialize in 1 thing and then just crank that out continuously to become an expert in their field. If given the choice I'd go for the more passionate surgeon every time.
  • nightski 6y ago
    Meh, the surgeon obsessed with self promotion and status seeking might not be the best one as they may be more focused on themselves than the task at hand.
    • nickjj 6y ago
      > Meh, the surgeon obsessed with self promotion and status seeking might not be the best one as they may be more focused on themselves than the task at hand. The ones I've talked with are more interested in the implementation details, changing lives for the better and sharing what they've learned so everyone as a whole can rise. Their practices are also wildly successful without content promotion and no to very little social media presence. These are the folks doing 750+ surgeries a year while being surrounded by relevant cases all the time. Basically total immersion in their field and then openly sharing everything with their colleagues.
      • varispeed 6y ago
        It does not mean everyone is like that. I was in care of one of world renown specialists in their field and I was just a case to them. They were more interested in documenting what I am going through in their journals than finding out how to help. At least this is how I felt about it. It may look great for an outsider, as they write papers, speak at conferences, show their findings, but somehow the human element is lost in all that.
• morphicpro 6y ago
  My #1 I take with this post is that Free ≠ Open. Software need to be open! If it was meant to be free it would be called Freesource not Opoensource.
• varispeed 6y ago
  If a company is looking for an open source work in the candidate CV it means they want to know if that person is keen on providing work for free. It means that the candidate shouldn't have problems staying over time without pay because it is his or hers passion. There is a distinction between passion and exploitation. You can be passionate without having to give away your labour for free. Big corporations want people to work on open source because it saves them R&D money. Some projects take years to develop and that costs millions had the companies had to pay salaries and taxes, but instead they can just appropriate the project once it is mature enough, pat the developers on the back and then make billions off of it without sharing a penny. You can be passionate and develop your own business, own projects without having to share them and saving corporations money. To level the playing field big corporations should be required to pay royalties to open source contributors.
  • bibabaloo 6y ago
    > If a company is looking for an open source work in the candidate CV it means they want to know if that person is keen on providing work for free. It means that the candidate shouldn't have problems staying over time without pay because it is his or hers passion. I think this would honestly be a bad assumption to make. The people I've worked with that did the most amount of work on their own time have typically not done any OSS work.. because they were working on work stuff all the time. Those that dabbled in (non work related) OSS stuff often were able to do so because they had clearer boundaries between work/personal work.
• jaccarmac 6y ago
  It's a thought-provoking article, but contains several serious contractions in terms. > For reasons that are complicated and that I don't fully understand, the software development community in the eighties and nineties developed a culture of anti-capitalism and liberal values that put technology on a pedestal for its own sake. Liberalism is by definition pro-capitalism. It's not pro-capitalism in the libertarian sense of "free markets", of course, but it's not like Silicon Valley doesn't have its right-libertarians, too. I think this analysis has it exactly backward. I find the position proposed in The Californian Ideology much more compelling: The culture Mark is talking about was a fusion of market liberalism, countercultural signifiers, and techno-utopianism. > The idea of free software, for example, has led to a software economy where you, the user, are no longer the customer, but the product. This is almost exactly what the notion of "free software" was invented to oppose. "Freedom" in software isn't supposed to be about price, but about liberty. Free software can absolutely cost money, but if it starts treating its users like products, it is by definition no longer free software. Of course, this is exactly why "open source" became so popular... > The idea of open source, too, seems largely defunct as a means of 'sticking it to the man'. Open source was never about "sticking it to the man". Open source is a defanged version of free software, where the only freedom left is the one which hurts the man the least when exercised. Post-Open Source by Melody Horn is also recommended reading here.
• notagoodidea 6y ago
  A friend of mine had the saying "Innovation is for the product not the employees." When a talking about a former place of work mentality. I use it in my cover letter when I explain why I choose to apply to X company by stating that they don't fit this mold. Same during interviews, when asked if I have contributed to open source library, I answer not at at work and that I don't program that much on my free time. It may not serve me well but it is the last bastion of honesty that the hiring process allows me. Besides that you are still just selling yourself to whoever take interest in your case.
• yellowapple 6y ago
  > The idea of free software, for example, has led to a software economy where you, the user, are no longer the customer, but the product. No it hasn't, unless the author is conflating free software with free beer. Free software, if anything, leads to the opposite: empowering users to take stronger ownership over the programs they use.
• WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  > The development manager immediately shot down that idea: "If we do that, they'll leave us once they have the certification." This one is so common, it's a staple. Very few places I have worked will pay for certs because after that the employee is worth more so there's no budget for the cert + the requisite pay bump that having such a cert deserves. I don't know how to fix it, but I wish one day I can convince other people that training is the path to unlocking better teams versus just more headcount. The salary for one senior dev can be split 5 ways into an existing team and given enough knowledge can make you more than having an extra dev. I read Bullshit Jobs and realized why this might be the issue... reports are a sign of power, the more you have, the more power you have, so in order to advance your career, you must be willing to sacrifice the place you work at by hiring more and more people under you.
• axguscbklp 6y ago
  >employers want employees who are passionate about their craft Do they really? I feel that my employers have all preferred employees who prioritize business needs, smooth functioning of the corporate hierarchy, "doing what everyone else is doing", and writing code for the common denominator more than they prioritize personal feelings about code quality and about what technological decisions are correct. I feel that my employers would all have preferred a steady, dispassionate 9-5 corporate type over a passionate employee who burns the midnight oil. The midnight oil burner, they probably would think, is likely to be a "cowboy coder". He might be a loose cannon. Not that any of this is surprising. Of course employers prefer employees who prioritize making the company money more highly than they prioritize passion about their craft.
• einpoklum 6y ago
  > For reasons that are complicated and that I don't fully understand, the software development community in the eighties and nineties developed a culture of anti-capitalism This goes back to an earlier age of software, in the 1960s and 1970s, when much more software was being shared, among research groups and labs in Academia and industry, as it had not been commoditized and commercialized as such. As this gradually changed, it also motivated an embattled, somewhat-delayed, backlash in the form of the Free Software movement. > and liberal values Problematic term, because it means very different things historically vs. in current political discourse in the US. > The idea of free software, for example, has led to a software economy where you, the user, are no longer the customer, but the product. The author accepts as granted the foundational assumptions that: * Users are customers, basically and originally. * Software is a commodity, to be sold (as a product or service). * Users are fundamentally disjoint from developers, and these groups of people interact through commercial entities. Proponents of Free Software with an anti-Capitalist perspective would be to differ. > The idea of open source, too, seems largely defunct as a means of 'sticking it to the man'. While commercial corporations co-opt FOSS as much as they can, it has still, and is still, sticking it to the man: Billions of people, given only access to a computer, can now enjoy a huge variety of software to meet their needs and interests, without having to pay for it. A salaried software developer, sitting in some tech-rich organization, may fail to appreciate what a tremendous achievement this is. And there's the no less important ability to partake in development, and to build on the existing software with something new - which is much less accessible than plain use, but infinitely more accessible than with commercial closed-source software. > You're expected to 'contribute' to open source software. Why? Because employers want employees who are passionate about their craft. I don't know what employers expect. But we, i.e. users and developers of FOSS, need your help to add features and fix bugs and write docs and file bugs, for the software we use or want. > Would you like engineers to be passionate as they design new bridges? I hope they could be. This is less likely the less in touch they are with the people and groups who need their bridge; and the more alienated they are from their work in general. > passionate... I'd prefer that they keep a cool head and make as rational decisions as possible. This is a false dichotomy. The dispassionate programmer is more often than not the disinterested programmer; the "I just work here" programmer; the programmer who is writing software to meet arbitrary goals set by far-away managers, not to have the tool they need or to help their friends and colleagues. > This was back in my Microsoft days, so I suggested that they institute a training programme for the employees. To give it structure, they could, for example, study for some Microsoft certifications. Ah... well, indeed, living in the Micorosft certified-whatever world will likely take care of your excessive passion problems. > If I teach you something that improves your productivity, your employer benefits, too. I think that your employer should pay for that. This, I agree with. But instead of "being dispassionate", I suggest we be _unionized_! Make those companies pay for this kind of professional development and meandering exploration of new knowledge and skills. (And also remember that a lot of, or most of, FOSS isn't necessarily what you do in your day job anyway.)
• capitalistLove 6y ago
  This writer clearly doesn't understand the Free Software movement. " For reasons that are complicated and that I don't fully understand, the software development community in the eighties and nineties developed a culture of anti-capitalism and liberal values that put technology on a pedestal for its own sake. Open source good; commercial software bad. Free software good; commercial software bad. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to such ideas, but it's seems clear, now, that these ideas have had unintended consequences. The idea of free software, for example, has led to a software economy where you, the user, are no longer the customer, but the product. " Free software is free as in freedom, not free as in you don't have to pay for it. If Google & co followed the ideals of free software, all of their source code for their servers would be available to the public, and indivuduals would be free to spin up and run their own google that doesn't use ads. This writer has no idea what he is talking about, its not worth reading this post.
• kaelig 6y ago
  I feel like these articles gloss over the fact coding, vlogging, etc. in our free time isn't always about "advancing the craft" and "career advancement". People like painting, baking, brewing beer, playing music or sports... and also coding. For free.
• capitalistLove 6y ago
  I dont think this person understands passion. When you do something out of passion, it doesnt burn you out. It doesnt feel like work, because you enjoy it. By definition, you cant burn out by pursuing your passion. I am passionate about software development - I enjoy it and while I have experienced burnout before, its never been from software development, only from all of the other things that have to do with business. I want to hire passionate developers not because they are "easier to exploit" but because passion helps you be better at what you do - if you can program for hours and not feel burnt out because you enjoy it, youre likley to program a lot and gain a lot of technical expertise. Passionate people are more likley to be happy with their jobs, and happiness can be contageious - it contributes to a positive office environment. I dont expect anyone to ever work more than 40 hours a week regardless of passion - in fact I discourage it, and even encourage working less than that if you can still get things done doing so. Passionate people don't get "rewarded with a pat on the back" as the writer claims - they get rewarded by having done something they enjoyed and being happy. Huge difference. It sounds like this person isn't passionate, and is trying to make up for it by mischaracterizing passionate people and attacking them. This seems dumb, jelous, and mean. I agree that passion shouldnt be a requirement to be employed in a field - after all, lots of people arent passionate about anything and still have to make money. Fortunatley, from fist hand experience, it is obviously not neccisary to be passionate about software to have a career in it. We already live in the world this person wants. I agree that this is how it should be. I dont see the point of trying to go after people who value passion or try to form work groups where thats a sought after trait, them doing so doesnt make things worse for anyone else.
  • PeterWhittaker 6y ago
    I have to take issue with the notion that doing a thing out of passion will not burn you out: it is possible to overdo a thing - out of passion - to the extent it does burn you out. Speaking from personal experience.... Recovery is easier/faster than in the non-passion case, but it still happens. As to being dispassionate, when I take such an approach, even to the passionate thing, I have greater endurance and tolerance for moments of frustration. Seems to me that protects from overdoing it too.
• xyzelement 6y ago
  Whenever this topic comes up, there's this sort of assumption that passion must be impractical, but I actually find that the "best" people are ones that find a way to be passionately engaged in things that happen to deliver a lot of financial value to themselves and others. I would say that I am passionate about solving problems with technology - I was coding since GWBASIC on a Soviet 286 when I was 8 years old. I am in product now and I still get fired up about solving problems for my users and clients. But... I was also able to channel this passion into lucrative fields. If you asked me 2 decades ago if my passion is derivatives trading software, I'd say no. But turns out this field gave me plenty of space to be creative, enthusiastic, and engaged while giving me and my family a good life. And also I can connect my work to important things (eg: helping asset managers generate good returns for pension funds) To be honest, I'd hesitate to hire someone who is just all about open source, because if they don't care (that much) about financial impact of their work on their own life, I can't rely on them to care about the financial impact of their software on my company's success either, and I guess it just feels like impractical/unpragmatic decision making.
• fukmbas 6y ago
  Developer this developer that. Fact is there are many other technical jobs that do not require full time programming a github repo. Always will be. Someone has to fix the crap you guys code.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• echlebek 6y ago
  I've read through some of the comments here, and more of you need to quit your jobs.