6 ms·

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Have I just been i

> Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them? Have I just been incredibly lucky and every boss I have had is too incompetent to notice? Do I have imposter syndrome and I am actually a 10x developer whose laziness makes them a 1x developer? Lazy developers don't really bother me, if you do a couple hours of high-quality work a week I'd have no complaint. (Many weeks I do as little, some weeks I do a decent amount of real work :) The problem is developers making negative progress, usually messes that need to be cleaned up ... and it's an awkward situation, no matter your relative authority. I'm in the "we should consider them lines spent, not lines produced" camp. An old disputed quote: > I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. > Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.

Dave3of5 5y ago
Always found that quote interesting as is not really correct. Everyone is a percentage of those traits. No one is universally clever and never does anything stupid for example. It's putting people in a box which people love to do.
- foxhop 5y ago
  A generals job is to generalize and elevate the key agents. The industrial idiot will cause more work, build in you into a corner, waste time, resources, people, lives, on counter productive missions and projects which distract from essential work, cause bottlenecks in any or all systems at once. Objectively bad processes run away with more power than deserved. An army of autonomous actors only works if you root out the problems and agents causing drift.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  That's fair, but I think in this case boxing people is a method of telling the story, not the end goal; the goal is to point out how a seemingly good quality (Industrious, hard working, energetic) can have negative consequences and results if misused and misguided.
jayceekay 5y ago
so many of us are patting ourselves on the back right now :\
- aredplug 5y ago
 Perhaps quotes that make people feel bad are less likely to survive.
 - pas 5y ago
 Just start to feel bad all the time to compensate for this bias, easy!
 - dynamite-ready 5y ago
 <sarcasm>Pretty sure that's imposter syndrome<sarcasm>
 - throwaway934876 5y ago
 Because you didn't close that last tag I feel like there is still some double sarcasm coming after this remark...
 bartoszcki 5y ago
 </sarcasm></sarcasm>
 exikyut 5y ago
 Hmm. Now I'm wondering if it makes semantic sense to nest sarcasm tags. If not, they might self-close, like or <li>.
 helldritch 5y ago
 </sarcasm></sarcasm> Felt like I needed to resolve that or we may never stop being sarcastic
arcastroe 5y ago
(4 Choose 2) is 6. The quote only specified what to do with four of those combinations. What does one do with the other two? Or is it just impossible to be both clever and stupid at the same time? I've had my share of both cleverly stupid ideas and stupidly clever ideas.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  It's two bits: lazy or industrious, clever or stupid. So four combinations.
- david-gpu 5y ago
  You can't be lazy and industrious at the same time, nor clever and stupid. There are only four valid options.
  - t-3 5y ago
    Oh, yes you can. Never seen anyone waste a whole day grinding in a game? Never seen someone pour genius into a non-problem? These things happen all the time, as a result of exactly those intersections.
- confidantlake 5y ago
  The other two options are 1. clever and stupid 2. industrious and lazy Neither of those options make much sense. They are choosing both values of one parameter and no values are choosen for the other parameter
ipiz0618 5y ago
Ok I'm going to be lazy from now on to avoid being fired...
- throwaway934876 5y ago
  I think an important lesson is, from all comments here, that you can work a lot less and get away with it but you need to excel in areas other than productivity. What are those areas? Imho: Vision, providing direction, knowing when to be productive at the exact right time, identify well in advance what won't work, identify who is doing the same as you and working together or leveraging that work. Perhaps you can do very little until you finally identify that one core important thing and be praised for those couple of hours. It's a skill as any other.
markb139 5y ago
I’ve worked with a genuine 0.1x developer. Not only were they unproductive (which is fine if you are new or inexperienced in an area), but they actually reduced the productivity of others in the team. I think sometimes this was deliberate as a plan to get the team reassigned. Luckily I was a contractor and could largely ignore the politics and just get on with work.
- hattori_hanzo 5y ago
  This is a -1.0x developer.
  - JJMcJ 5y ago
    So called Net Negative Producer. Much more dangerous than someone who is merely slow.
ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
Massively agree with this, either do nothing or do it right. I’m a contractor and change around a fair bit and when I join a project you can tell if it is good or ok or terrible. My current project is terrible, the people who set it up tried but have that real lack of understanding what is required (they have clean code but no tests) it is really hard to debug and takes forever to deliver anything. If they had just done nothing I could have set it up properly when I started and we could have been done months ago.
- foxhop 5y ago
  You don't go to war with the tests you want, you go to war with the tests you got. Write a test or swim blind with the rest of the fish.
boppo1 5y ago
Author of quote?
robmccoll 5y ago
Yes! I bucket people into paddling the right direction, sitting in the boat, and paddling the wrong way. With enough momentum, you can tolerate the people that are sitting in the boat. Sometimes they have good reasons and it's temporary. The people always actively working against progress need to be overboard. Smaller teams may need all paddlers. I'd like to think I'm always paddling and usually the right direction.
- throwaway934876 5y ago
  I'm like OP, I feel like I paddle along, minimal effort, then sometimes I take some strong strokes and get many of the people that work "the wrong way" to paddle the right way for some strokes and I can continue on momentum for another couple of months. When I'm not 100% sure I'm paddling the right way or management wants me to paddle the wrong way, I don't really peddle, I complain and start playing around with fun tech that I think is the right way. Then when the time comes, I makes some powerful strokes again (aided by the new knowledge from playing). This is going to sound cocky but I feel that I'm pretty good at determining what the right way is, and that is the reason I get away with it. It's like I'm slowly walking by a wall, feeling where it is weakest for months on end, then I make one big push, it falls, things change, I make noise, people appreciate it and understand this is the right way. Lead by example it's been called. To be clear, I consider the wrong way usually the ineffective way. Ie in our org many people write many one-off scripts, I always try to focus on creating re-useable assets following global standards. I promote innersource because it's fun but also because it enabled other devs to make my CI/CD pipelines. I'm lazy but I think in a good way.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    I think another interesting aspect of software development is that critiquing others' paddling technique (code review) can be as or more valuable than just paddling yourself - it makes both of you more effective paddlers.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    > sometimes I take some strong strokes and get many of the people that work "the wrong way" to paddle the right way for some strokes and I can continue on momentum for another couple of months. Welcome to management. ;)
bsenftner 5y ago
Stupid and industrious is exactly the crypto/NFT population. They are smart in code, but zeros in financial literacy, and zeros in complex social dynamics - the perfect rubes to promote hazy, social frauds.
- davidgerard 5y ago
  now now, be fair: they're zeros in code too
pvillano 5y ago
Limited to my participation in Advent of Code, I am clever and stupid.
omar12 5y ago
> Lazy developers don't really bother me, if you do a couple hours of high-quality work a week I'd have no complaint. This has been my philosophy, as long as a developer is not making me do more work, I won't mind.
aw9f70gae 5y ago
This just makes me feel worse because I'm a very hardworking noob.
- Lord_Zero 5y ago
  You don't start there. You end up there when you can crank out line of business apps super quickly. You start as a screw driver, takes a lot of manual work and time, and you end up years later as a power drill.
FloNeu 5y ago
Haha. that's pretty funny way to look at it. i like it.

Dave3of5 5y ago

Always found that quote interesting as is not really correct. Everyone is a percentage of those traits. No one is universally clever and never does anything stupid for example. It's putting people in a box which people love to do.

foxhop 5y ago
A generals job is to generalize and elevate the key agents. The industrial idiot will cause more work, build in you into a corner, waste time, resources, people, lives, on counter productive missions and projects which distract from essential work, cause bottlenecks in any or all systems at once. Objectively bad processes run away with more power than deserved. An army of autonomous actors only works if you root out the problems and agents causing drift.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
That's fair, but I think in this case boxing people is a method of telling the story, not the end goal; the goal is to point out how a seemingly good quality (Industrious, hard working, energetic) can have negative consequences and results if misused and misguided.

jayceekay 5y ago

so many of us are patting ourselves on the back right now :\

aredplug 5y ago
Perhaps quotes that make people feel bad are less likely to survive.
- pas 5y ago
 Just start to feel bad all the time to compensate for this bias, easy!
 - dynamite-ready 5y ago
 <sarcasm>Pretty sure that's imposter syndrome<sarcasm>
 - throwaway934876 5y ago
 Because you didn't close that last tag I feel like there is still some double sarcasm coming after this remark...
 - bartoszcki 5y ago
 </sarcasm></sarcasm>
 - exikyut 5y ago
 Hmm. Now I'm wondering if it makes semantic sense to nest sarcasm tags. If not, they might self-close, like or <li>.
 helldritch 5y ago
 </sarcasm></sarcasm> Felt like I needed to resolve that or we may never stop being sarcastic

arcastroe 5y ago

(4 Choose 2) is 6. The quote only specified what to do with four of those combinations. What does one do with the other two? Or is it just impossible to be both clever and stupid at the same time? I've had my share of both cleverly stupid ideas and stupidly clever ideas.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
It's two bits: lazy or industrious, clever or stupid. So four combinations.
david-gpu 5y ago
You can't be lazy and industrious at the same time, nor clever and stupid. There are only four valid options.
- t-3 5y ago
  Oh, yes you can. Never seen anyone waste a whole day grinding in a game? Never seen someone pour genius into a non-problem? These things happen all the time, as a result of exactly those intersections.
confidantlake 5y ago
The other two options are 1. clever and stupid 2. industrious and lazy Neither of those options make much sense. They are choosing both values of one parameter and no values are choosen for the other parameter

ipiz0618 5y ago

Ok I'm going to be lazy from now on to avoid being fired...

throwaway934876 5y ago
I think an important lesson is, from all comments here, that you can work a lot less and get away with it but you need to excel in areas other than productivity. What are those areas? Imho: Vision, providing direction, knowing when to be productive at the exact right time, identify well in advance what won't work, identify who is doing the same as you and working together or leveraging that work. Perhaps you can do very little until you finally identify that one core important thing and be praised for those couple of hours. It's a skill as any other.

markb139 5y ago

I’ve worked with a genuine 0.1x developer. Not only were they unproductive (which is fine if you are new or inexperienced in an area), but they actually reduced the productivity of others in the team. I think sometimes this was deliberate as a plan to get the team reassigned. Luckily I was a contractor and could largely ignore the politics and just get on with work.

hattori_hanzo 5y ago
This is a -1.0x developer.
- JJMcJ 5y ago
  So called Net Negative Producer. Much more dangerous than someone who is merely slow.

ed_elliott_asc 5y ago

Massively agree with this, either do nothing or do it right. I’m a contractor and change around a fair bit and when I join a project you can tell if it is good or ok or terrible. My current project is terrible, the people who set it up tried but have that real lack of understanding what is required (they have clean code but no tests) it is really hard to debug and takes forever to deliver anything. If they had just done nothing I could have set it up properly when I started and we could have been done months ago.

foxhop 5y ago
You don't go to war with the tests you want, you go to war with the tests you got. Write a test or swim blind with the rest of the fish.

boppo1 5y ago

Author of quote?

robmccoll 5y ago

Yes! I bucket people into paddling the right direction, sitting in the boat, and paddling the wrong way. With enough momentum, you can tolerate the people that are sitting in the boat. Sometimes they have good reasons and it's temporary. The people always actively working against progress need to be overboard. Smaller teams may need all paddlers. I'd like to think I'm always paddling and usually the right direction.

throwaway934876 5y ago
I'm like OP, I feel like I paddle along, minimal effort, then sometimes I take some strong strokes and get many of the people that work "the wrong way" to paddle the right way for some strokes and I can continue on momentum for another couple of months. When I'm not 100% sure I'm paddling the right way or management wants me to paddle the wrong way, I don't really peddle, I complain and start playing around with fun tech that I think is the right way. Then when the time comes, I makes some powerful strokes again (aided by the new knowledge from playing). This is going to sound cocky but I feel that I'm pretty good at determining what the right way is, and that is the reason I get away with it. It's like I'm slowly walking by a wall, feeling where it is weakest for months on end, then I make one big push, it falls, things change, I make noise, people appreciate it and understand this is the right way. Lead by example it's been called. To be clear, I consider the wrong way usually the ineffective way. Ie in our org many people write many one-off scripts, I always try to focus on creating re-useable assets following global standards. I promote innersource because it's fun but also because it enabled other devs to make my CI/CD pipelines. I'm lazy but I think in a good way.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  I think another interesting aspect of software development is that critiquing others' paddling technique (code review) can be as or more valuable than just paddling yourself - it makes both of you more effective paddlers.
- kbenson 5y ago
  > sometimes I take some strong strokes and get many of the people that work "the wrong way" to paddle the right way for some strokes and I can continue on momentum for another couple of months. Welcome to management. ;)

bsenftner 5y ago

Stupid and industrious is exactly the crypto/NFT population. They are smart in code, but zeros in financial literacy, and zeros in complex social dynamics - the perfect rubes to promote hazy, social frauds.

davidgerard 5y ago
now now, be fair: they're zeros in code too

pvillano 5y ago

Limited to my participation in Advent of Code, I am clever and stupid.

omar12 5y ago

> Lazy developers don't really bother me, if you do a couple hours of high-quality work a week I'd have no complaint. This has been my philosophy, as long as a developer is not making me do more work, I won't mind.

aw9f70gae 5y ago

This just makes me feel worse because I'm a very hardworking noob.

Lord_Zero 5y ago
You don't start there. You end up there when you can crank out line of business apps super quickly. You start as a screw driver, takes a lot of manual work and time, and you end up years later as a power drill.

FloNeu 5y ago

Haha. that's pretty funny way to look at it. i like it.