Something about this mindset is depressing to me. Obviously we all want to get shit done, and every company wants to hire people that get shit done, but this de

Something about this mindset is depressing to me. Obviously we all want to get shit done, and every company wants to hire people that get shit done, but this definition of 'get shit done' seems very narrow and robotic. The author seems to want to evaluate a programmer's efficiency the same way we evaluate the efficiency of an assembly line or a sorting algorithm. The problem is that the smartest, most creative, and overall most productive people often don't think this way at all. Instead of slogging away obediently at a problem for six hours, they might dilly-dally on twitter for two hours before having a lateral insight that lets them solve the problem in 15 minutes. They might go to Thailand for the first 3 weeks of a 4 week project then, in a semi-sleepless 100 hour binge, produce a technical masterpiece with a beautiful UI and additional business-savvy features no one else could have thought of thrown in on the fly. Would it be better for your company if this person just sat at his or her desk and focused perfectly and coded 10 hours a day like a good little robot? Does it matter? The same qualities that make some people brilliant will tend to make them unable or unwilling to work like this. You can gripe about irresponsibility or lack of discipline, but they are indeed getting shit done, just not the same way you do. You can pass on them because they don't fit your mold if you like--a more open-minded company will quickly be there to capitalize on the value they offer.