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>School is a closed-world domain—you are solving crisply-defined puzzles Bingo. When people from US tech culture say "hard problems" they really mean "hard puz

>School is a closed-world domain—you are solving crisply-defined puzzles Bingo. When people from US tech culture say "hard problems" they really mean "hard puzzles". A lot of those people are very proud of their puzzle-solving skills acquired at school (what Edward De Bono calls vertical thinking), while being absolutely awful at dealing with ill-defined open problems (lateral thinking). Instead of counteracting this tendency in some way most Silicon Valley companies actually amplify the problem by running puzzle interviews and structuring their work around glorified paperclip maximization. This is why so many systems we have to use today are extremely complex, highly optimized for some specific criteria, but ultimately designed like shit.

lixtra 5y ago
I don’t see it so strict. You can put vertical and lateral thinkers together in a team and get the best of both worlds, i.e. solve the puzzles that matter and provide a sane system that actually works.
daveslash 5y ago
This really hit me this morning, and the timing couldn't be better. We took on a CompSci intern from an Ivy League for the summer. Tomorrow's his last day. When he first came on, I was really trepidatious; I couldn't put my finger on why, but this blog post sums it up perfectly. We're doing important work, but it's not "hard puzzles". It's "hard" work, but we work with boring technology and solve boring technical problems ~ I was worried about how this go over with the intern from the Ivy Leagues. Day one we're tearing down hardware with vice grips because the guy with the hex-drivers is out and splicing wires. Tomorrow's his last day, and he seemed to really enjoy it, but I think he enjoyed it because it was not "just another hard puzzle" - he was given "ultra-vague end goal", had to "prioritize many different sub-problems", and "probably don’t even know what all the dimensions are, let alone which are the most important". Much different from all of his academia... I'm glad he enjoyed it, and I feel good having provided a valuable experience for a talented budding CompSci engineer.
ctvo 5y ago
I was with you until the end. > Instead of counteracting this tendency in some way most Silicon Valley companies actually amplify the problem by running puzzle interviews and structuring their work around glorified paperclip maximization. This is why so many systems we have to use today are extremely complex, highly optimized for some specific criteria, but ultimately designed like shit. That's quite a jump. There are multitudes of interacting systems that cause complexity in software, from time constraints, to company structure, to incorrectly mapping the domain, to sometimes incompetency. Companies that don't hire and reward the behavior you outline have just as complex systems. Maybe there's something else there?

lixtra 5y ago

I don’t see it so strict. You can put vertical and lateral thinkers together in a team and get the best of both worlds, i.e. solve the puzzles that matter and provide a sane system that actually works.

daveslash 5y ago

This really hit me this morning, and the timing couldn't be better. We took on a CompSci intern from an Ivy League for the summer. Tomorrow's his last day. When he first came on, I was really trepidatious; I couldn't put my finger on why, but this blog post sums it up perfectly. We're doing important work, but it's not "hard puzzles". It's "hard" work, but we work with boring technology and solve boring technical problems ~ I was worried about how this go over with the intern from the Ivy Leagues. Day one we're tearing down hardware with vice grips because the guy with the hex-drivers is out and splicing wires. Tomorrow's his last day, and he seemed to really enjoy it, but I think he enjoyed it because it was not "just another hard puzzle" - he was given "ultra-vague end goal", had to "prioritize many different sub-problems", and "probably don’t even know what all the dimensions are, let alone which are the most important". Much different from all of his academia... I'm glad he enjoyed it, and I feel good having provided a valuable experience for a talented budding CompSci engineer.

ctvo 5y ago

I was with you until the end. > Instead of counteracting this tendency in some way most Silicon Valley companies actually amplify the problem by running puzzle interviews and structuring their work around glorified paperclip maximization. This is why so many systems we have to use today are extremely complex, highly optimized for some specific criteria, but ultimately designed like shit. That's quite a jump. There are multitudes of interacting systems that cause complexity in software, from time constraints, to company structure, to incorrectly mapping the domain, to sometimes incompetency. Companies that don't hire and reward the behavior you outline have just as complex systems. Maybe there's something else there?