11 ms·

Dumb and Gets Things Done (2010)

221 points by vinnyglennon 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zimpenfish 3y ago
(2010)
Mimmy 3y ago
I generally like his essays, but is there anything substantive here? He doesn't define smart. He doesn't define what it means to get stuff done. He doesn't convince me that there are a lot of dumb people getting stuff done. If there are, he doesn't convince me that they are much of a problem (hypothetical good teachers that teach ignorance isn't an argument, it's not even an anecdote). And even if they are a problem, he doesn't offer a solution. If anyone was able to takeaway anything useful from this article, please share.
- TehShrike 3y ago
  I have seen people honestly suggest that it doesn't matter exactly what they're adding to the software, or how they add it, as long as they're adding something that someone else sort of asked for. I think this post might be useful for those people – a way to suggest "but what if not?"
- BoxFour 3y ago
  I have indeed encountered numerous individuals proclaiming the mantra of "any action is better than inaction," leading inevitably to the notion that "more actions equate to greater efficacy." In reality, countless establishments still uphold the belief that the measure of "lines of code" serves as a suitable yardstick for gauging "productivity," even in unexpected contexts. The key lesson to be gleaned from this is the need to convey this concept in a manner comprehensible to executives, who often grasp the intricacies of warfare terminology and analogies.
- ajhurliman 3y ago
  Agreed. He’s unnecessarily conflating “fast” and “bad”. Often times people move quickly because they know what they’re doing, not because they’re mindlessly flailing. The attempt to characterize the two traits as inseparable is like drawing a picture of a <demographic_x> robbing a store and showing it to people like “See how awful <demographic_x> is?”. There’s no actual evidence, it’s just a baseless assertion.
- titannet 3y ago
  I agree and also think the author did a wrong turn somewhere after the original quote. One point of the quote roughly translated into the modern office is that dumb managers that create pointless busywork for others are part of big corporations and all together not a big deal as long as they are lazy dumb managers. Energetic dumb managers on the other hand may create a neverending spiral of problems and need to be watched carefully. (On a sidenote there are several versions of the quote attributed to German generals - Moltke the elder, von Mannstein and von Hammerstein-Equord and I think most of them are better).
- wiseowise 3y ago
  It’s an article for people to validate their biases. It’s deliberately empty so that people put in stupid, smart, lazy, energetic whoever they deem belongs there.
  - owenmarshall 3y ago
    I'd go as far as to say that those of us posting on HN on a Wednesday consider ourselves both clever and lazy - I do! - and so the joke is little more than puffery bait.
angarg12 3y ago
I find the article amusing but it feels like it is missing a clear closing statement about why this matters. My take is that "dumb and get things done" is dangerous because they can do harm quickly, unlike dumb and lazy which at least doesn't get on the way. These are the ones that pump thousands of lines of spaghetti code, copy pasting all over the place and creating a unmaintainable big ball of mud. They are the ones that implement the first solution that comes to mind before considering alternatives. Are the ones that never refactor or tidy their code and simply add another if statement. The irony is that in certain companies these people might be seen as heroes. After all, isn't it more impressive to produce hundreds of complicated lines of code in half the time rather than a few dozen of clean and maintainable lines of code in twice the time.
- MichaelRo 3y ago
  Unfortunately it seems to me like the majority of programmers I've come in contact with belong to the "dumb and get things done" group. The algorithm is: 1) Get hired at a new place. 2) Vomit a lot of code adopting the latest and greatest fad without any prior experience in it (like "template metaprogramming") and with no knowledge whatsoever of the domain in cause (ex: finance, map navigation etc). None of these are an impediment in immediately starting to produce code in great quantities. 3) Keep on #2 until some resemblance of responsability appears, like need to actually deliver that project. Or until the unintended and accidental complexity of said code exceeds their limited mental capacity. Then apply for a new job somewhere else, padding their resume with "experience in fad X" and quit, leaving the burden of making some use (and sense) of their abomination to another poor soul teleported there at the last moment to "help".
  - whstl 3y ago
    Couldn't agree more. In almost 20 years I've learned that, at least to me, the most challenging group to manage are mid-level developers. Juniors don't have a lot of experience with complex code, so they just make simple code which I can understand with a glance. Mid-level developers are often into trying new stuff and fall in love with complex solutions, so the code isn't really easy to understand, but damn if it isn't interesting, full of crazy new libraries, patterns and ideas. Seniors have a lot of experience with complex code, so they just make simple code which I can understand with a glance. Similar: https://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~robin/class/449/Evolution.htm https://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~robin/class/449/Evolution.ht...
gdubs 3y ago
In Ross Perot's defense (I know...) there's an argument that without him we wouldn't have the iPhone. He provided NeXT with some critical funding at a time when their technology was still outside the computing mainstream. Without NeXT, no MacOS X. No OS X, no iOS.
- BoxFour 3y ago
  In the author's defense, he specifically points out that he's not debating Perot's platform or accolades. It's about the fixation on "gets things done" without seeming to care about what it is that gets done.
  - gdubs 3y ago
    Yea but this is Hacker News and it was an opportunity to bring up an interesting and relevant tidbit that people might not have heard about before.
Ozzie_osman 3y ago
I think it's actually Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, not Napolean, who proposed that matrix.
- john-radio 3y ago
  With the amount of effort that got put into this article we're lucky it didn't get attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.
- rzzzt 3y ago
  I thought "No plan survives contact with an enemy" is a WWII phrase, but apparently that's also a saying of his: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/
jrott 3y ago
This article is such a mix of hilarious and deeply frustrating. It does identify a real problem of people who get things done but what they have done is useless at best or harmful at worst. The issue is what to do about it. I’m guessing it’s hard to say because the two skills that I’d think of as smart in the context of this article are, understanding what is important and taste to know what good looks like. Of course both of those things are very hard to teach and in practice mostly seem to be taught via apprenticeship.
- BoxFour 3y ago
  The article delineates a course of action: Shoot them. Clearly, not in the literal sense, but rather suggesting that "dumb and energetic" ought to be dismissed if they can't rectify it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
benatkin 3y ago
> One time I heard someone praised as a good teacher. Not knowledgeable, but a good teacher. I objected that if someone is ignorant but a good teacher, does that mean they’re effective in conveying their ignorance? Wouldn’t that be a bad thing? No, all that mattered was that he was a good teacher. I need more context. An elementary school teacher that is really great with students but doesn't know much beyond the books and other materials is probably a good part of the 6 or more teachers a student will have. It doesn't say professor but even then it seems like an odd demand to me.
- BoxFour 3y ago
  In this context, I think the term 'ignorant' seems likely to be employed to convey a repugnant belief rather than a state of overall lack of knowledge. Replace 'ignorant' with 'climate change denialism' or whatever belief you might find abhorrent.
chaosjevil 3y ago
One thing that I often repeat is that stupidity is worse than malice. And by "stupidity" I don't mean lack of knowledge; I mean lack of reasoning. The people who are malicious but smart will only cause you damage when it benefits them, but the stupid will cause you damage all the time - even when it harms them. I feel like this text has a similar reasoning. The "dumb and gets things done", or the "dumb and energetic", they're so eager to help, and yet they're doing the opposite. For example they'll write that piece of spaghetti that breaks often, has more holes than a sieve, but it's still used by everyone else around them - because the lazy didn't do it, and the smart are probably worried about other stuff.
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  It's a bane of all bureaucratic structures because such energetic/"gets things done" people tend to rise in the ranks (their self-confidence also helps) and then their stupidity allows them to inflict damage on truly impressive scale. No wonder there exists a Soviet-era saying "who's more dangerous than an idiot? An idiot with initiative" because they've been hit hard with that unpleasant truth.
  - chaosjevil 3y ago
    [flagged]
hrunt 3y ago
From the article: > One time I heard someone praised as a good teacher. Not knowledgeable, but a good teacher. I objected that if someone is ignorant but a good teacher, does that mean they’re effective in conveying their ignorance? Wouldn’t that be a bad thing? No, all that mattered was that he was a good teacher. I recently started volunteering with an organization that works to build CS programs in schools that don't have them[0]. The typical way that CS programs get started is a teacher of some other subject is given the CS curriculum and told to teach it. They typically don't know anything about CS, often have not taught a related subject (e.g. math), and yet they're expected to teach it effectively. Why? Because they are teachers. They are trained to teach, and the smart ones are smart /at that/. Note that for a new CS teacher, they typically use an existing curriculum developed by someone else (e.g. Code.org), so aside from the teacher's own internal biases, any ignorance comes from someone else. I've always had respect for teachers as people who do something that try to build up other people, but seeing how a teacher goes from zero-to-teaching has opened my eyes to how and why great teachers are real multipliers. [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/teals https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/teals
- gretch 3y ago
  to further retort the article author: You don't have to be that knowledgeable to teach the basics. If the curriculum is binary arithmetic, there's far more skill in trying to articulately convey the concept to someone who has done base10 all their life, than there is actually knowing how to do base2. There's a lot of people out there that are amazing at their jobs/domain - but they absolutely cannot explain it to a newbie. Teaching is a whole skill on it's own.
photochemsyn 3y ago
You can't shoot the dumb and energetic in modern society, but assigning them to futile cycle tasks is an alternative solution. You don't want them involved anywhere they could do any real damage, but they're on your roster, and they need something to do. Have them continually move goods between several different warehouses, for example. Or, gather a group of them together and put them on an advisory committee that meets daily in a remote building, and task them with preparation of a 1,000 page report, which later goes into the recycler. People can get smarter, too. If they recognize they're involved in a futile cycle, then that could mean they're ready to move on to doing something more useful.
ftxbro 3y ago
This kind of contrarian clickbait headline is the open mouth Mr. Beast youtube thumbnail of blogpost titles.
Scubabear68 3y ago
I have lived this in contexts, it is absolutely true. Energetic dumb people get noticed and often promoted based on their energy and seeming ability to move fast. That quickness is usually due to the fact that they don’t do any proper due diligence or analysis, they just bull ahead. The trick is to catch them early enough and get rid of them as quick as you can. Seen this both in startups and big companies where a person was fired a year to the day they were hired (or whatever their contractual “safe period” was). I have also seen orgs where they did not catch them in time. You do not want to work there.
ramesh31 3y ago
I'd consider myself dumb and lazy in this context. I'm lazy, so nothing I build is ever complicated. And I'm dumb, so it's never very clever either. The result is simple straightforward readable code, with very little indirection, and minimal modularization. It drives the Architecture Astronauts crazy, but Grug no mind. Neither do PM. His code work, and feature done fast.
janmarsal 3y ago
Dumb and lazy make the best programmers. Lazy people are too lazy to write tens of thousands of lines of code, and dumb people are too dumb to understand overly complex code so they keep it simple. Short and simple code is the best.
- intelVISA 3y ago
  Laziness as a programmer is a virtue, you will always find the path of least resistance which usually results in some pretty reasonable decisions imo.
- mike_ivanov 3y ago
  Short, simple and working code is the hardest thing in the world. It takes a lot of both intellect and experience.
  - janmarsal 3y ago
    It's only hard for the big brain people who can't help themselves
    - mike_ivanov 3y ago
      No.
awinter-py 3y ago
steve yegge post 'done and gets things smart' also good if we're trading spolsky hot takes https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-thing... > Someone who always seems to be finishing stuff so fast it makes your head spin. That's what my Done clause means. It means they're frigging done all the time. > You can't interview these people. For starters, they're not interested; these are the people that companies hold on to as long as humanly or companyly possible. The kinds of people that companies file lawsuits over when they're recruited away.
- greazy 3y ago
  I work with one of these. They're a Gervais Principle Loser, only works three days a week, doesn't care about promotions, work politics, money or anything really. He's an extreme person as well, dressing in the same clothes every single day because he doesn't care about clothing. He's there to help us when we mortals get stuck. I tried to poach him once, let's just say people got upset.
kduckc 3y ago
Napoleon is not the source of the "four categories" doctrine. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  I figured if the author was going to make such a egregious mistake in the opening paragraph that he was too lazy to write anything that I could trust afterwards, and so I stopped reading.
  - teachrdan 3y ago
    The author refers to it as a joke, which immediately changes this from "A quote from Napoleon" to "A joke about Napoleon." I don't think it's wise to write off the rest of the article because of it.
dumpster_fire 3y ago
I don't know about this. What I deem smart or dumb changes over the years. When I was a junior dev, I saw someone totally new to coding create a single static class method that did tens of thousands of lines of if else checks for a state machine. The group of us junior devs shared the code snippet with each other and laughed at how ridiculous it was. The code could've been so much cleaner with proper extraction and abstraction. The bootcamp fresh minted dev was what I had considered as someone who's dumb but gets things done. Over the years as I worked with more teams, I've seen people do "smart" things like a one liner quadruple nested ternary return. Everyone marveled at how clean it looked. I've also seen smart devs who experimented with Haskell or OCaml in their spare time start using closures in closures in closures. Lambdas everywhere when remotely possible. Anyone who didn't understand what they were doing were too inexperienced and dumb. They were always heralded as the geniuses of the company. Nowadays, I very much rather debug a ten thousand line static method with if else clauses. It's quick to navigate, and incredibly easy to debug. Stupidly simple is my new smart. The only thing I've really concluded after so long is that, the only dumb person in the room is always me. I've been told I'm a pretty kick-ass teacher so that pretty much seals my dumbass status.
- silvestrov 3y ago
  This is the main reason I dislike java Spring Boot: too much magick going on at runtime which is difficult to figure out if you are not an expert in Spring. Much better to have (pre)generated code which is then compiled like any other java code. In this case you can see the code, you can navigate it, you can single-step thru it when running. Spring Boot is too much like monkey patching in Ruby. Please let me see the code that runs.
- joseda-hg 3y ago
  I was recently discussing something similar, and we came to the conclusion that the difference lies in Intention Doing an overly complex method because that's the only way you know vs doing it because it has benefits We came to it in a discussion about manners (My interlocutor usually does something considered rude, but does it in an over the top way that always get a chuckle) You need to know plenty about rules, before you know how to break them with good results
balaji1 3y ago
Is this a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312295 from yesterday hahahah?
rdrd 3y ago
I think we’ve all worked with people that fall into these when it comes to PR time. Smart and energetic - "I think this covers everything functionally and I’ve added a couple of extra unit tests for the functions I had to refactor” Smart and lazy - "This covers everything but I’ll add the unit tests in a follow up PR shortly" [never happens] Dumb and energetic - "Can you review this ASAP please, it’s only small, shouldn’t have any bugs or issues. I just need to get this in because <manager> is looking for this feature ASAP. I will fix any issues in a follow up PR." [prod issue w/ feature after go-live] Dumb and lazy - <Raises PR, fails CI tests, doesn’t respond to any feedback for a week> [feature 3 weeks late] I guess pick your poison on the last 2?
layer8 3y ago
Aren’t computers themselves the epitome of “dumb” and “getting things done”? Maybe we should shoot them all. ;)
quelsolaar 3y ago
As someone who runs a startup, Id kill for a couple of "dumb" people who can get something done. A number of years a go I worked at a startup, and we had a young inexperienced employee, who didn't know very much at all. When we had meetings he would unprompted send out lists of everything we had discussed, along with links and useful information. If someone had mentioned that we needed a to rent a truck once we get to LA, to move some gear, he would look up all the places where that could be done. Simple stuff like typing stuff in to google. One of the best employees i have ever worked with. Every time he asked a question, it was a question based on all the research he had done based on the question he asked a few days ago. Its great if you already have the solution, but what i really want is people who can go out and find the solution. There are a lot of smart and lazy people out there, but if you build the future you cant rely on old information, you need to iterate on new solutions, and that requires people who can get things done. So please be smart and experienced, but unless you can get things done you are just in the way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- BoxFour 3y ago
  In this particular context, the connotation of "dumb" does not pertain to a complete lack of knowledge. Even individuals regarded as intelligent may find themselves in situations where their knowledge is limited. Rather, it pertains more to one's capacity for logical reasoning and discerning connections, which your employee seems to have demonstrated proficiently. They embody the role of the "field commander" as described in the article. Consider, instead, if the employee inundated your inbox with materials only loosely relevant to the meetings, rather than undertaking the extensive efforts described earlier. Alternatively, envision the employee hiring a moving company without consulting you, rather than researching truck rental options. The article's reference to "dumb and energetic" pertains to this type of behavior—acting impulsively and energetically without proper consideration—rather than the situation you are describing. Indeed, there are companies that would reward that type of 'bias to action' even if the results weren't helpful at all.
- the_af 3y ago
Joel_Mckay 3y ago
What exactly do you mean by “Done”, as there seems to be no concept of workmanship in the text. The articles sounds like it was written by LLaMA, and injects detractors to dissuade critical content evaluation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU Personally, 40% of our income is from cleaning up what competitive “ignorant” people created. Have a glorious day =)
solatic 3y ago
What that quote by Napoleon fails to account for is that "smart" vs "dumb" isn't innate. People start off dumb, and through experience, become smart over time. If you fire your dumb and energetic people, you'll be hard-pressed to find any smart and energetic ones... pretty much only those whose current employers are dumb enough to lose them. You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. Your "army" is going to include dumb and energetic people. Learn to manage them. Encourage their energy by giving them lots of work; insulate yourself from their inexperience by ensuring the work you're giving them is low-risk and reviewable, and mentor them through their "dumb" phase. The question isn't whether you have enough low-risk and reviewable work (if you think you don't have any, believe me, you do), it's whether you have the luxury of budget to pay salaries to get it done.
- mihaic 3y ago
  I agree on having the luxury of budget being a thing, since only large companies have that. I think though you're lumping together both the inexperienced and the stubornly dumb, and by that I mean those that aren't humble/flexible to learn from experience. It's crucial to filter out arrogance that can't be taught so you don't poison your workforce.
  - solatic 3y ago
    In my book, humility is a core cultural value. You should always be willing to learn from others, and not lose your shit when someone gives you constructive criticism. I'm not saying "armies" should never fire anyone - bad cultural fit is certainly one legitimate reason.
- mike_ivanov 3y ago
  Experience is orthogonal to intellect.
  - greazy 3y ago
    I disagree, they are very much so related. I would even go so far as to say the majority of human qualities are interlinked.
karaterobot 3y ago
Napoleon, of course, was smart and got things done. Until he made numerous catastrophic and boneheaded choices involving what to try to get done, and as a consequence spent his last few years pacing around in a little garden on the most remote island they could find for him. What if people aren't a steady state? What if people defy such easy categories? What if Napoleon's matrix itself was one of his bad choices?
mempko 3y ago
Didn't Napoleon also lose?
bambax 3y ago
> One time I heard someone praised as a good teacher. Not knowledgeable, but a good teacher. I objected that if someone is ignorant but a good teacher, does that mean they’re effective in conveying their ignorance? Wouldn’t that be a bad thing? No, all that mattered was that he was a good teacher. Maybe the same isn't true of programmers, but for teachers, being knowledgeable and being a good teacher are different, independent qualities. Sure, there's some base knowledge that should be present. But it's absolutely possible to be a good teacher without knowing much beyond the basics. My best teachers weren't the most expert in their respective domain, they were the ones who let me see the world in a different way -- also in maths, and got me excited about the domain. I teach ballet dancing and clarinet to my kids without knowing anything about either. But I know good when I see or hear it, and I steer them in the right direction.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
scotty79 3y ago
I feel like the whole team that build AngularJS (the first version) were the kind of people Napoleon would have shot.
dingleberry 3y ago
if programming language were human, what would dumb-smart and lazy-energetic be? my take: dumb languages would be ones that have few concepts, can be made smarter thru evolutionary iteration (committee adding new concepts) energetic languages would be ones that require much typing (assume efforts = typing), can be made 'lazy' internally by macro (code that writes code) and externally by code generation (ai, ide etc)
dang 3y ago
Discussed at the time: Dumb and gets things done - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042759 - Dec 2010 (24 comments)
smartmic 3y ago
Because it is unavoidable at the moment... but wouldn't (any) GPT/LLM be a candidate for "Dumb and Gets Things Done"? In my experience, chatGPT tries so hard to write convincing and plausible answers that it has no problem to compromise on the correctness of the content. Well, I know, it has no sense of correctness at all. On the other hand, it could be useful as a foot soldier…
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mavu 3y ago
I want to break a torch for the "Dumb and get things done" crowd. With out them nothing would get finished. Try developing a complex and large product with a team consisting only of "smart and getting things done" people. Not going to happen. never. complete disaster from the start. You need the "dagtd" people to do the essential but boring parts. Attend customer meetings. Write requirements and documentation. etc. NEED. THEM. BADLY. No way around it. Luckily that is not as big a problem as it seems, because about 80% of "smart and getting things done" people are actually "dumb and getting things done". They just don't know it. Which is perfectly fine. Just don't tell them.
chaostheory 3y ago
I liked the Napoleon joke, but I was not sure what the author’s point was until an HN user eloquently wrote a closer as a comment. Going on a tangent, it was also hard to take his Ross Perot comment seriously. Perot had one political goal: reduce and end the deficit so that we can keep our debt level sane. His campaign is what caused GH Bush to lose a 2nd term to Bill Clinton. It’s also what drove the fleeting bipartisan obsession with minimizing the deficit until GW Bush’s ascension, where budgets ballooned for national security
motbus3 3y ago
All foot soldiers are considered dumb. They are considered disposable tools worth for nothing. They are only worth of carrying guns that need a reason

221 points by vinnyglennon 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zimpenfish 3y ago

(2010)

Mimmy 3y ago

I generally like his essays, but is there anything substantive here? He doesn't define smart. He doesn't define what it means to get stuff done. He doesn't convince me that there are a lot of dumb people getting stuff done. If there are, he doesn't convince me that they are much of a problem (hypothetical good teachers that teach ignorance isn't an argument, it's not even an anecdote). And even if they are a problem, he doesn't offer a solution. If anyone was able to takeaway anything useful from this article, please share.

TehShrike 3y ago
I have seen people honestly suggest that it doesn't matter exactly what they're adding to the software, or how they add it, as long as they're adding something that someone else sort of asked for. I think this post might be useful for those people – a way to suggest "but what if not?"
BoxFour 3y ago
I have indeed encountered numerous individuals proclaiming the mantra of "any action is better than inaction," leading inevitably to the notion that "more actions equate to greater efficacy." In reality, countless establishments still uphold the belief that the measure of "lines of code" serves as a suitable yardstick for gauging "productivity," even in unexpected contexts. The key lesson to be gleaned from this is the need to convey this concept in a manner comprehensible to executives, who often grasp the intricacies of warfare terminology and analogies.
ajhurliman 3y ago
Agreed. He’s unnecessarily conflating “fast” and “bad”. Often times people move quickly because they know what they’re doing, not because they’re mindlessly flailing. The attempt to characterize the two traits as inseparable is like drawing a picture of a <demographic_x> robbing a store and showing it to people like “See how awful <demographic_x> is?”. There’s no actual evidence, it’s just a baseless assertion.
titannet 3y ago
I agree and also think the author did a wrong turn somewhere after the original quote. One point of the quote roughly translated into the modern office is that dumb managers that create pointless busywork for others are part of big corporations and all together not a big deal as long as they are lazy dumb managers. Energetic dumb managers on the other hand may create a neverending spiral of problems and need to be watched carefully. (On a sidenote there are several versions of the quote attributed to German generals - Moltke the elder, von Mannstein and von Hammerstein-Equord and I think most of them are better).
wiseowise 3y ago
It’s an article for people to validate their biases. It’s deliberately empty so that people put in stupid, smart, lazy, energetic whoever they deem belongs there.
- owenmarshall 3y ago
  I'd go as far as to say that those of us posting on HN on a Wednesday consider ourselves both clever and lazy - I do! - and so the joke is little more than puffery bait.

angarg12 3y ago

I find the article amusing but it feels like it is missing a clear closing statement about why this matters. My take is that "dumb and get things done" is dangerous because they can do harm quickly, unlike dumb and lazy which at least doesn't get on the way. These are the ones that pump thousands of lines of spaghetti code, copy pasting all over the place and creating a unmaintainable big ball of mud. They are the ones that implement the first solution that comes to mind before considering alternatives. Are the ones that never refactor or tidy their code and simply add another if statement. The irony is that in certain companies these people might be seen as heroes. After all, isn't it more impressive to produce hundreds of complicated lines of code in half the time rather than a few dozen of clean and maintainable lines of code in twice the time.

MichaelRo 3y ago
Unfortunately it seems to me like the majority of programmers I've come in contact with belong to the "dumb and get things done" group. The algorithm is: 1) Get hired at a new place. 2) Vomit a lot of code adopting the latest and greatest fad without any prior experience in it (like "template metaprogramming") and with no knowledge whatsoever of the domain in cause (ex: finance, map navigation etc). None of these are an impediment in immediately starting to produce code in great quantities. 3) Keep on #2 until some resemblance of responsability appears, like need to actually deliver that project. Or until the unintended and accidental complexity of said code exceeds their limited mental capacity. Then apply for a new job somewhere else, padding their resume with "experience in fad X" and quit, leaving the burden of making some use (and sense) of their abomination to another poor soul teleported there at the last moment to "help".
- whstl 3y ago
  Couldn't agree more. In almost 20 years I've learned that, at least to me, the most challenging group to manage are mid-level developers. Juniors don't have a lot of experience with complex code, so they just make simple code which I can understand with a glance. Mid-level developers are often into trying new stuff and fall in love with complex solutions, so the code isn't really easy to understand, but damn if it isn't interesting, full of crazy new libraries, patterns and ideas. Seniors have a lot of experience with complex code, so they just make simple code which I can understand with a glance. Similar: https://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~robin/class/449/Evolution.htm https://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~robin/class/449/Evolution.ht...

gdubs 3y ago

In Ross Perot's defense (I know...) there's an argument that without him we wouldn't have the iPhone. He provided NeXT with some critical funding at a time when their technology was still outside the computing mainstream. Without NeXT, no MacOS X. No OS X, no iOS.

BoxFour 3y ago
In the author's defense, he specifically points out that he's not debating Perot's platform or accolades. It's about the fixation on "gets things done" without seeming to care about what it is that gets done.
- gdubs 3y ago
  Yea but this is Hacker News and it was an opportunity to bring up an interesting and relevant tidbit that people might not have heard about before.

Ozzie_osman 3y ago

I think it's actually Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, not Napolean, who proposed that matrix.

john-radio 3y ago
With the amount of effort that got put into this article we're lucky it didn't get attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.
rzzzt 3y ago
I thought "No plan survives contact with an enemy" is a WWII phrase, but apparently that's also a saying of his: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/

jrott 3y ago

This article is such a mix of hilarious and deeply frustrating. It does identify a real problem of people who get things done but what they have done is useless at best or harmful at worst. The issue is what to do about it. I’m guessing it’s hard to say because the two skills that I’d think of as smart in the context of this article are, understanding what is important and taste to know what good looks like. Of course both of those things are very hard to teach and in practice mostly seem to be taught via apprenticeship.

BoxFour 3y ago
The article delineates a course of action: Shoot them. Clearly, not in the literal sense, but rather suggesting that "dumb and energetic" ought to be dismissed if they can't rectify it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

benatkin 3y ago

BoxFour 3y ago
In this context, I think the term 'ignorant' seems likely to be employed to convey a repugnant belief rather than a state of overall lack of knowledge. Replace 'ignorant' with 'climate change denialism' or whatever belief you might find abhorrent.

chaosjevil 3y ago

One thing that I often repeat is that stupidity is worse than malice. And by "stupidity" I don't mean lack of knowledge; I mean lack of reasoning. The people who are malicious but smart will only cause you damage when it benefits them, but the stupid will cause you damage all the time - even when it harms them. I feel like this text has a similar reasoning. The "dumb and gets things done", or the "dumb and energetic", they're so eager to help, and yet they're doing the opposite. For example they'll write that piece of spaghetti that breaks often, has more holes than a sieve, but it's still used by everyone else around them - because the lazy didn't do it, and the smart are probably worried about other stuff.

Joker_vD 3y ago
It's a bane of all bureaucratic structures because such energetic/"gets things done" people tend to rise in the ranks (their self-confidence also helps) and then their stupidity allows them to inflict damage on truly impressive scale. No wonder there exists a Soviet-era saying "who's more dangerous than an idiot? An idiot with initiative" because they've been hit hard with that unpleasant truth.
- chaosjevil 3y ago
  [flagged]

hrunt 3y ago

From the article: > One time I heard someone praised as a good teacher. Not knowledgeable, but a good teacher. I objected that if someone is ignorant but a good teacher, does that mean they’re effective in conveying their ignorance? Wouldn’t that be a bad thing? No, all that mattered was that he was a good teacher. I recently started volunteering with an organization that works to build CS programs in schools that don't have them[0]. The typical way that CS programs get started is a teacher of some other subject is given the CS curriculum and told to teach it. They typically don't know anything about CS, often have not taught a related subject (e.g. math), and yet they're expected to teach it effectively. Why? Because they are teachers. They are trained to teach, and the smart ones are smart /at that/. Note that for a new CS teacher, they typically use an existing curriculum developed by someone else (e.g. Code.org), so aside from the teacher's own internal biases, any ignorance comes from someone else. I've always had respect for teachers as people who do something that try to build up other people, but seeing how a teacher goes from zero-to-teaching has opened my eyes to how and why great teachers are real multipliers. [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/teals https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/teals

gretch 3y ago
to further retort the article author: You don't have to be that knowledgeable to teach the basics. If the curriculum is binary arithmetic, there's far more skill in trying to articulately convey the concept to someone who has done base10 all their life, than there is actually knowing how to do base2. There's a lot of people out there that are amazing at their jobs/domain - but they absolutely cannot explain it to a newbie. Teaching is a whole skill on it's own.

photochemsyn 3y ago

You can't shoot the dumb and energetic in modern society, but assigning them to futile cycle tasks is an alternative solution. You don't want them involved anywhere they could do any real damage, but they're on your roster, and they need something to do. Have them continually move goods between several different warehouses, for example. Or, gather a group of them together and put them on an advisory committee that meets daily in a remote building, and task them with preparation of a 1,000 page report, which later goes into the recycler. People can get smarter, too. If they recognize they're involved in a futile cycle, then that could mean they're ready to move on to doing something more useful.

ftxbro 3y ago

This kind of contrarian clickbait headline is the open mouth Mr. Beast youtube thumbnail of blogpost titles.

Scubabear68 3y ago

I have lived this in contexts, it is absolutely true. Energetic dumb people get noticed and often promoted based on their energy and seeming ability to move fast. That quickness is usually due to the fact that they don’t do any proper due diligence or analysis, they just bull ahead. The trick is to catch them early enough and get rid of them as quick as you can. Seen this both in startups and big companies where a person was fired a year to the day they were hired (or whatever their contractual “safe period” was). I have also seen orgs where they did not catch them in time. You do not want to work there.

ramesh31 3y ago

I'd consider myself dumb and lazy in this context. I'm lazy, so nothing I build is ever complicated. And I'm dumb, so it's never very clever either. The result is simple straightforward readable code, with very little indirection, and minimal modularization. It drives the Architecture Astronauts crazy, but Grug no mind. Neither do PM. His code work, and feature done fast.

janmarsal 3y ago

Dumb and lazy make the best programmers. Lazy people are too lazy to write tens of thousands of lines of code, and dumb people are too dumb to understand overly complex code so they keep it simple. Short and simple code is the best.

intelVISA 3y ago
Laziness as a programmer is a virtue, you will always find the path of least resistance which usually results in some pretty reasonable decisions imo.
mike_ivanov 3y ago
Short, simple and working code is the hardest thing in the world. It takes a lot of both intellect and experience.
- janmarsal 3y ago
  It's only hard for the big brain people who can't help themselves
  - mike_ivanov 3y ago
    No.

awinter-py 3y ago

steve yegge post 'done and gets things smart' also good if we're trading spolsky hot takes https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-thing... > Someone who always seems to be finishing stuff so fast it makes your head spin. That's what my Done clause means. It means they're frigging done all the time. > You can't interview these people. For starters, they're not interested; these are the people that companies hold on to as long as humanly or companyly possible. The kinds of people that companies file lawsuits over when they're recruited away.

greazy 3y ago
I work with one of these. They're a Gervais Principle Loser, only works three days a week, doesn't care about promotions, work politics, money or anything really. He's an extreme person as well, dressing in the same clothes every single day because he doesn't care about clothing. He's there to help us when we mortals get stuck. I tried to poach him once, let's just say people got upset.

kduckc 3y ago

Napoleon is not the source of the "four categories" doctrine. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/

readthenotes1 3y ago
I figured if the author was going to make such a egregious mistake in the opening paragraph that he was too lazy to write anything that I could trust afterwards, and so I stopped reading.
- teachrdan 3y ago
  The author refers to it as a joke, which immediately changes this from "A quote from Napoleon" to "A joke about Napoleon." I don't think it's wise to write off the rest of the article because of it.

dumpster_fire 3y ago

I don't know about this. What I deem smart or dumb changes over the years. When I was a junior dev, I saw someone totally new to coding create a single static class method that did tens of thousands of lines of if else checks for a state machine. The group of us junior devs shared the code snippet with each other and laughed at how ridiculous it was. The code could've been so much cleaner with proper extraction and abstraction. The bootcamp fresh minted dev was what I had considered as someone who's dumb but gets things done. Over the years as I worked with more teams, I've seen people do "smart" things like a one liner quadruple nested ternary return. Everyone marveled at how clean it looked. I've also seen smart devs who experimented with Haskell or OCaml in their spare time start using closures in closures in closures. Lambdas everywhere when remotely possible. Anyone who didn't understand what they were doing were too inexperienced and dumb. They were always heralded as the geniuses of the company. Nowadays, I very much rather debug a ten thousand line static method with if else clauses. It's quick to navigate, and incredibly easy to debug. Stupidly simple is my new smart. The only thing I've really concluded after so long is that, the only dumb person in the room is always me. I've been told I'm a pretty kick-ass teacher so that pretty much seals my dumbass status.

silvestrov 3y ago
This is the main reason I dislike java Spring Boot: too much magick going on at runtime which is difficult to figure out if you are not an expert in Spring. Much better to have (pre)generated code which is then compiled like any other java code. In this case you can see the code, you can navigate it, you can single-step thru it when running. Spring Boot is too much like monkey patching in Ruby. Please let me see the code that runs.
joseda-hg 3y ago
I was recently discussing something similar, and we came to the conclusion that the difference lies in Intention Doing an overly complex method because that's the only way you know vs doing it because it has benefits We came to it in a discussion about manners (My interlocutor usually does something considered rude, but does it in an over the top way that always get a chuckle) You need to know plenty about rules, before you know how to break them with good results

balaji1 3y ago

Is this a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312295 from yesterday hahahah?

rdrd 3y ago

I think we’ve all worked with people that fall into these when it comes to PR time. Smart and energetic - "I think this covers everything functionally and I’ve added a couple of extra unit tests for the functions I had to refactor” Smart and lazy - "This covers everything but I’ll add the unit tests in a follow up PR shortly" [never happens] Dumb and energetic - "Can you review this ASAP please, it’s only small, shouldn’t have any bugs or issues. I just need to get this in because <manager> is looking for this feature ASAP. I will fix any issues in a follow up PR." [prod issue w/ feature after go-live] Dumb and lazy - <Raises PR, fails CI tests, doesn’t respond to any feedback for a week> [feature 3 weeks late] I guess pick your poison on the last 2?

layer8 3y ago

Aren’t computers themselves the epitome of “dumb” and “getting things done”? Maybe we should shoot them all. ;)

quelsolaar 3y ago

As someone who runs a startup, Id kill for a couple of "dumb" people who can get something done. A number of years a go I worked at a startup, and we had a young inexperienced employee, who didn't know very much at all. When we had meetings he would unprompted send out lists of everything we had discussed, along with links and useful information. If someone had mentioned that we needed a to rent a truck once we get to LA, to move some gear, he would look up all the places where that could be done. Simple stuff like typing stuff in to google. One of the best employees i have ever worked with. Every time he asked a question, it was a question based on all the research he had done based on the question he asked a few days ago. Its great if you already have the solution, but what i really want is people who can go out and find the solution. There are a lot of smart and lazy people out there, but if you build the future you cant rely on old information, you need to iterate on new solutions, and that requires people who can get things done. So please be smart and experienced, but unless you can get things done you are just in the way.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
BoxFour 3y ago
In this particular context, the connotation of "dumb" does not pertain to a complete lack of knowledge. Even individuals regarded as intelligent may find themselves in situations where their knowledge is limited. Rather, it pertains more to one's capacity for logical reasoning and discerning connections, which your employee seems to have demonstrated proficiently. They embody the role of the "field commander" as described in the article. Consider, instead, if the employee inundated your inbox with materials only loosely relevant to the meetings, rather than undertaking the extensive efforts described earlier. Alternatively, envision the employee hiring a moving company without consulting you, rather than researching truck rental options. The article's reference to "dumb and energetic" pertains to this type of behavior—acting impulsively and energetically without proper consideration—rather than the situation you are describing. Indeed, there are companies that would reward that type of 'bias to action' even if the results weren't helpful at all.
the_af 3y ago

Joel_Mckay 3y ago

What exactly do you mean by “Done”, as there seems to be no concept of workmanship in the text. The articles sounds like it was written by LLaMA, and injects detractors to dissuade critical content evaluation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU Personally, 40% of our income is from cleaning up what competitive “ignorant” people created. Have a glorious day =)

solatic 3y ago

What that quote by Napoleon fails to account for is that "smart" vs "dumb" isn't innate. People start off dumb, and through experience, become smart over time. If you fire your dumb and energetic people, you'll be hard-pressed to find any smart and energetic ones... pretty much only those whose current employers are dumb enough to lose them. You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. Your "army" is going to include dumb and energetic people. Learn to manage them. Encourage their energy by giving them lots of work; insulate yourself from their inexperience by ensuring the work you're giving them is low-risk and reviewable, and mentor them through their "dumb" phase. The question isn't whether you have enough low-risk and reviewable work (if you think you don't have any, believe me, you do), it's whether you have the luxury of budget to pay salaries to get it done.

mihaic 3y ago
I agree on having the luxury of budget being a thing, since only large companies have that. I think though you're lumping together both the inexperienced and the stubornly dumb, and by that I mean those that aren't humble/flexible to learn from experience. It's crucial to filter out arrogance that can't be taught so you don't poison your workforce.
- solatic 3y ago
  In my book, humility is a core cultural value. You should always be willing to learn from others, and not lose your shit when someone gives you constructive criticism. I'm not saying "armies" should never fire anyone - bad cultural fit is certainly one legitimate reason.
mike_ivanov 3y ago
Experience is orthogonal to intellect.
- greazy 3y ago
  I disagree, they are very much so related. I would even go so far as to say the majority of human qualities are interlinked.

karaterobot 3y ago

Napoleon, of course, was smart and got things done. Until he made numerous catastrophic and boneheaded choices involving what to try to get done, and as a consequence spent his last few years pacing around in a little garden on the most remote island they could find for him. What if people aren't a steady state? What if people defy such easy categories? What if Napoleon's matrix itself was one of his bad choices?

mempko 3y ago

Didn't Napoleon also lose?

bambax 3y ago

> One time I heard someone praised as a good teacher. Not knowledgeable, but a good teacher. I objected that if someone is ignorant but a good teacher, does that mean they’re effective in conveying their ignorance? Wouldn’t that be a bad thing? No, all that mattered was that he was a good teacher. Maybe the same isn't true of programmers, but for teachers, being knowledgeable and being a good teacher are different, independent qualities. Sure, there's some base knowledge that should be present. But it's absolutely possible to be a good teacher without knowing much beyond the basics. My best teachers weren't the most expert in their respective domain, they were the ones who let me see the world in a different way -- also in maths, and got me excited about the domain. I teach ballet dancing and clarinet to my kids without knowing anything about either. But I know good when I see or hear it, and I steer them in the right direction.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

scotty79 3y ago

I feel like the whole team that build AngularJS (the first version) were the kind of people Napoleon would have shot.

dingleberry 3y ago

if programming language were human, what would dumb-smart and lazy-energetic be? my take: dumb languages would be ones that have few concepts, can be made smarter thru evolutionary iteration (committee adding new concepts) energetic languages would be ones that require much typing (assume efforts = typing), can be made 'lazy' internally by macro (code that writes code) and externally by code generation (ai, ide etc)

dang 3y ago

Discussed at the time: Dumb and gets things done - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042759 - Dec 2010 (24 comments)

smartmic 3y ago

Because it is unavoidable at the moment... but wouldn't (any) GPT/LLM be a candidate for "Dumb and Gets Things Done"? In my experience, chatGPT tries so hard to write convincing and plausible answers that it has no problem to compromise on the correctness of the content. Well, I know, it has no sense of correctness at all. On the other hand, it could be useful as a foot soldier…

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mavu 3y ago

I want to break a torch for the "Dumb and get things done" crowd. With out them nothing would get finished. Try developing a complex and large product with a team consisting only of "smart and getting things done" people. Not going to happen. never. complete disaster from the start. You need the "dagtd" people to do the essential but boring parts. Attend customer meetings. Write requirements and documentation. etc. NEED. THEM. BADLY. No way around it. Luckily that is not as big a problem as it seems, because about 80% of "smart and getting things done" people are actually "dumb and getting things done". They just don't know it. Which is perfectly fine. Just don't tell them.

chaostheory 3y ago

I liked the Napoleon joke, but I was not sure what the author’s point was until an HN user eloquently wrote a closer as a comment. Going on a tangent, it was also hard to take his Ross Perot comment seriously. Perot had one political goal: reduce and end the deficit so that we can keep our debt level sane. His campaign is what caused GH Bush to lose a 2nd term to Bill Clinton. It’s also what drove the fleeting bipartisan obsession with minimizing the deficit until GW Bush’s ascension, where budgets ballooned for national security

motbus3 3y ago

All foot soldiers are considered dumb. They are considered disposable tools worth for nothing. They are only worth of carrying guns that need a reason