4 ms·

This is just a really silly way to think of craftsmanship. Whoever you pay to redo your bathroom doesn't care at all, literally at all, about your motivations b

This is just a really silly way to think of craftsmanship. Whoever you pay to redo your bathroom doesn't care at all, literally at all, about your motivations behind wanting to redo your bathroom and how you think it'll change your whole morning and evening routines. They don't care. It's their craft. They will redo your bathroom to the best of their abilities and will take pleasure in new or interesting units of work you've included in your bathroom design that they haven't been able to try. What you're suggesting is just hustle culture nonsense. If you want someone to be invested in your company, give them _equity_. If you won't (and you won't), accept that you're paying for a transactional relationship, not "investment".

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
I would disagree. If they knew I was redoing my bathroom to sell the house and know my sink design choice is less saleable than another sink design choice, I would absolutely want this person to tell me as such and would pay extra money to hire a contractor who would say things like that. And then tell everyone I know to hire this contractor, they are worth the money.
- void_mint 5y ago
  That's not a contractor though....
notJim 5y ago
This isn't really true IME. The best contractors will understand the goals and motivations for your project, and make suggestions based on their vastly greater experience of ways to improve upon the project.
- drchiu 5y ago
  This is correct. Also tends to be more expensive as well.
delusional 5y ago
This comment makes it seem like you've never worked with a contractor. I come from a family of contractors (electricians and metalworkers mostly), and every experience I've ever had working with them tell me that they care about understanding. If you ask them to make you a bathroom without any waterproofing they'll ask you if you've gone mad and tell you that you NEED waterproofing, because they understand that you don't want your house to rot. If you say you want a metal frame and you have a drawing. The very first step they will take is to analyze your drawing to see if it makes any sense. I have never worked with a contractor that just did whatever you told them to, without understanding what you're doing. If they chose to disengage with a problem, it's a conscious choice. The big differentiator is the ease of understanding. Building a bathroom is relatable. You kinds of intuitively understand why you want a new bathroom, and people understand the sorts of issues a new bathroom can solve. People do NOT understand what new software can solve, and how it solves it. They think software is magic pixie dust that you sprinkle on problems to make them go away. That means we have to do more of the work of helping them map out the solution than a contractor would.
- void_mint 5y ago
  > If you ask them to make you a bathroom without any waterproofing they'll ask you if you've gone mad and tell you that you NEED waterproofing, because they understand that you don't want your house to rot. Nowhere did I suggest otherwise. > I've ever had working with them tell me that they care about understanding. They care about understanding to complete the task at hand. I have never met a contractor that got emotionally invested in whether the cabinets you picked out were the cabinets of your dreams. I've met many contractors that were, in some ways, invested in the buyer being satisfied with their job, but that's not really the same thing.
  - lexicality 5y ago
    The grandparent said > I don't care about the project, I care about writing code this is like the contractor saying they only care about installing cabinets, not helping you model your bathroom. The point is that you want someone that's going to look at the plan and say "that's going to rot in 2 years", not just do the exact thing requested by the customer and leave
mdoms 5y ago
> This is just a really silly way to think of craftsmanship. Whoever you pay to redo your bathroom doesn't care at all, literally at all, about your motivations behind wanting to redo your bathroom and how you think it'll change your whole morning and evening routines. This depends on who you hire. I recently built a home and dealt with lots of different contractors with different attitudes. Very often when they needed clarification they would come to me, and very often I would ask them "what would you do if it were your home?". I worked with companies and workers who I would hire again in a heartbeat - they understood what I wanted from my home and how it would be used. They incorporated this into designs and decisions made on site (because I don't care how well you think you've planned, there are ALWAYS decisions to make one site). The people I would never work with again were the ones who either never even asked for clarification and simply chose the easiest / cheapest solution to a problem (often surprising me - in a bad way) or when I asked them what they would do in their own home were not interested in engaging with that question - they would respond by asking me again what I wanted. You may not care if your current employer considers you a bad hire or not, and that's fine. In our industry, in this market, you can get away with that. Some of us hold ourselves to a higher standard.
- void_mint 5y ago
  > You may not care if your current employer considers you a bad hire or not, and that's fine. In our industry, in this market, you can get away with that. Some of us hold ourselves to a higher standard. This is just silly. Your argument is that you would care if your employer developed ridiculous and contrived metrics and then assessed your value based on them? I don't really think your holier-than-thou statement makes much sense in that capacity. As I said, equity drives investment. If you don't own a percentage of the success, you're trading time for money. This is neither new nor controversial. Any suggestions otherwise are, again, hustle culture propaganda.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    It's like you skipped over my entire post and only read the last sentence. > Your argument is that you would care if your employer developed ridiculous and contrived metrics and then assessed your value based on them? No. As I alluded to, I think that a developer who does not care about his or her end user is a worse developer in concrete ways.

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago

I would disagree. If they knew I was redoing my bathroom to sell the house and know my sink design choice is less saleable than another sink design choice, I would absolutely want this person to tell me as such and would pay extra money to hire a contractor who would say things like that. And then tell everyone I know to hire this contractor, they are worth the money.

void_mint 5y ago
That's not a contractor though....

notJim 5y ago

This isn't really true IME. The best contractors will understand the goals and motivations for your project, and make suggestions based on their vastly greater experience of ways to improve upon the project.

drchiu 5y ago
This is correct. Also tends to be more expensive as well.

delusional 5y ago

This comment makes it seem like you've never worked with a contractor. I come from a family of contractors (electricians and metalworkers mostly), and every experience I've ever had working with them tell me that they care about understanding. If you ask them to make you a bathroom without any waterproofing they'll ask you if you've gone mad and tell you that you NEED waterproofing, because they understand that you don't want your house to rot. If you say you want a metal frame and you have a drawing. The very first step they will take is to analyze your drawing to see if it makes any sense. I have never worked with a contractor that just did whatever you told them to, without understanding what you're doing. If they chose to disengage with a problem, it's a conscious choice. The big differentiator is the ease of understanding. Building a bathroom is relatable. You kinds of intuitively understand why you want a new bathroom, and people understand the sorts of issues a new bathroom can solve. People do NOT understand what new software can solve, and how it solves it. They think software is magic pixie dust that you sprinkle on problems to make them go away. That means we have to do more of the work of helping them map out the solution than a contractor would.

void_mint 5y ago
> If you ask them to make you a bathroom without any waterproofing they'll ask you if you've gone mad and tell you that you NEED waterproofing, because they understand that you don't want your house to rot. Nowhere did I suggest otherwise. > I've ever had working with them tell me that they care about understanding. They care about understanding to complete the task at hand. I have never met a contractor that got emotionally invested in whether the cabinets you picked out were the cabinets of your dreams. I've met many contractors that were, in some ways, invested in the buyer being satisfied with their job, but that's not really the same thing.
- lexicality 5y ago
  The grandparent said > I don't care about the project, I care about writing code this is like the contractor saying they only care about installing cabinets, not helping you model your bathroom. The point is that you want someone that's going to look at the plan and say "that's going to rot in 2 years", not just do the exact thing requested by the customer and leave

mdoms 5y ago

> This is just a really silly way to think of craftsmanship. Whoever you pay to redo your bathroom doesn't care at all, literally at all, about your motivations behind wanting to redo your bathroom and how you think it'll change your whole morning and evening routines. This depends on who you hire. I recently built a home and dealt with lots of different contractors with different attitudes. Very often when they needed clarification they would come to me, and very often I would ask them "what would you do if it were your home?". I worked with companies and workers who I would hire again in a heartbeat - they understood what I wanted from my home and how it would be used. They incorporated this into designs and decisions made on site (because I don't care how well you think you've planned, there are ALWAYS decisions to make one site). The people I would never work with again were the ones who either never even asked for clarification and simply chose the easiest / cheapest solution to a problem (often surprising me - in a bad way) or when I asked them what they would do in their own home were not interested in engaging with that question - they would respond by asking me again what I wanted. You may not care if your current employer considers you a bad hire or not, and that's fine. In our industry, in this market, you can get away with that. Some of us hold ourselves to a higher standard.

void_mint 5y ago
> You may not care if your current employer considers you a bad hire or not, and that's fine. In our industry, in this market, you can get away with that. Some of us hold ourselves to a higher standard. This is just silly. Your argument is that you would care if your employer developed ridiculous and contrived metrics and then assessed your value based on them? I don't really think your holier-than-thou statement makes much sense in that capacity. As I said, equity drives investment. If you don't own a percentage of the success, you're trading time for money. This is neither new nor controversial. Any suggestions otherwise are, again, hustle culture propaganda.
- mdoms 5y ago
  It's like you skipped over my entire post and only read the last sentence. > Your argument is that you would care if your employer developed ridiculous and contrived metrics and then assessed your value based on them? No. As I alluded to, I think that a developer who does not care about his or her end user is a worse developer in concrete ways.