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Programmers also suffer from the problem of no objective performance measure - there is no way to tell the difference between good programmer + hard problem and

Programmers also suffer from the problem of no objective performance measure - there is no way to tell the difference between good programmer + hard problem and average programmer + easy problem.

taneq 5y ago
Sure there is. You take each programmer’s self-ranked hardest N problems and get the other programmer to try and solve them.
- NateEag 5y ago
  People are not actually fungible. Each of us has different skills, insights, strengths, weaknesses, and life experience. What caused one of us months of misery might be the next person's perfect problem, what they were born to solve flawlessly.
  - taneq 5y ago
    That’s why you average across several questions. If one is too hard just leave it. You’ll pretty soon get an idea who’s good at what.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  And if one person has had a career of spending 1 year on each research problem while the other person has had a career of spending ten minutes on each UI micro-bug? You swap the problems, and person A spends 20 minutes, person B spends half a year, and you think person A is better even though they're actually 4x worse.
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    Plot hole. Why did he spend 1 year on each research problem? After a year, what? A paper incorrectly proving the goal was impossible because that's what PhD's in industry say (I've seen this) so they're boss gets off their case?
  - taneq 5y ago
    Just because you can contrive a pairing that’s less efficient to compare doesn’t mean it’s a bad test for colleagues.
Jensson 5y ago
Which is why many programmers don't want to make good UI's. It is a ton of technical work to get all those features working, and at the end people praise the UX designers for doing a good job creating such a good UI and not the people who coded it all together, except if it breaks then it is the programmers fault. People say the code is the easy part, but seemingly not a single big company can actually manage to get the code right, and it gets even worse at most smaller companies, so from my perspective we lack programmers who knows what they are doing way more than we lack programmers who has empathy. No amount of empathy matters if the programmer ultimately fails to code up a working system, you'd rather have a programmer who can code up a working system with all the fancy parts needed for good UX when given proper requirements.
daniel-cussen 5y ago
Have a crack at the problem yourself.

Programmers also suffer from the problem of no objective performance measure - there is no way to tell the difference between good programmer + hard problem and average programmer + easy problem.

taneq 5y ago

Sure there is. You take each programmer’s self-ranked hardest N problems and get the other programmer to try and solve them.

NateEag 5y ago
People are not actually fungible. Each of us has different skills, insights, strengths, weaknesses, and life experience. What caused one of us months of misery might be the next person's perfect problem, what they were born to solve flawlessly.
- taneq 5y ago
  That’s why you average across several questions. If one is too hard just leave it. You’ll pretty soon get an idea who’s good at what.
whatshisface 5y ago
And if one person has had a career of spending 1 year on each research problem while the other person has had a career of spending ten minutes on each UI micro-bug? You swap the problems, and person A spends 20 minutes, person B spends half a year, and you think person A is better even though they're actually 4x worse.
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  Plot hole. Why did he spend 1 year on each research problem? After a year, what? A paper incorrectly proving the goal was impossible because that's what PhD's in industry say (I've seen this) so they're boss gets off their case?
- taneq 5y ago
  Just because you can contrive a pairing that’s less efficient to compare doesn’t mean it’s a bad test for colleagues.

Jensson 5y ago

Which is why many programmers don't want to make good UI's. It is a ton of technical work to get all those features working, and at the end people praise the UX designers for doing a good job creating such a good UI and not the people who coded it all together, except if it breaks then it is the programmers fault. People say the code is the easy part, but seemingly not a single big company can actually manage to get the code right, and it gets even worse at most smaller companies, so from my perspective we lack programmers who knows what they are doing way more than we lack programmers who has empathy. No amount of empathy matters if the programmer ultimately fails to code up a working system, you'd rather have a programmer who can code up a working system with all the fancy parts needed for good UX when given proper requirements.

daniel-cussen 5y ago

Have a crack at the problem yourself.