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Sometimes I think the biggest secret in this industry is that 2 people can outproduce even the largest companies. The only thing keeping everyone's job secure i

Sometimes I think the biggest secret in this industry is that 2 people can outproduce even the largest companies. The only thing keeping everyone's job secure is that nobody can accurately identify which 2 people.

misterbishop 3y ago
A rational economic system would eliminate the distinction between education and production so that people are constantly learning/improving while occasionally contributing to massive breakthroughs. We systemically under-develop every single human being on a global basis right now.
- nxobject 3y ago
  Everyone deserves an experience like that, at the very least – everyone deserves to be in a position where they have the opportunity to really enquire, or engineer, or know what it's like to solve new problems. It really is a good purpose that education could meet.
  - Buttons840 3y ago
    I'm frustrated that "good management" involves breaking things down so small that there is no room for enquiry or engineering. Jira ticket #5229 "Port get_order_* API" doesn't leave much room for problem solving.
    - azinman2 3y ago
      It’s almost like business needs come first
      - Buttons840 3y ago
        Is there a world where we put people's needs first?
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
  Really? There are tons of people who learn while working, which is what I assmue you are advocating for rather than literally "eliminat[ing] the distinction between education and production," which would include school children working. This is especially true in the top end of fields like medicine. Surgeons create and learn new surgeries, for example. And I don't think Sergey Brin took a course on how to create Google in university, and the Google engineers did not learn how to scale it there either. See also the massive research arms of Google et al. So "every single human being" is trivialy false. But even in the general case, college does not directly prepare you for your profession (nor is it meant to) and you are expected to learn on the job. And if what you say is true that you are not learning while working there would be no reason for companies to seek employees with experience.
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
Yeah, that's definitely not true. You'll know when you interview them and they have extensive contributions to open source, an active GitHub or GitLab account, can show you things they're proud of having made in their spare time, can talk at length about technologies and implementation details none of your other candidates can, can show you their participation in mailing lists, etc. There are a billion obvious signals compared to the people who clock in at 8 AM, sign out at 5 PM, and argue with your teammates about problems that entire swaths of engineers consider rudimentary: understanding how to write patches in readable ways, not screwing up git logs, not submitting PRs 10k SLOC long with no explanation as to how the automated output was created for replication and verification. There are obvious clowns in the industry, and people who really love doing this stuff, and you can figure out who they are in a 5 minute conversation. It really insults people when you tell them this, because yes, there are absolutely people that work harder and longer than you because they want to and enjoy it--they don't just go home and watch Netflix.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  And a lot of times companies won't hire these passionate people.
  - andrewmcwatters 3y ago
    They don't even know who they are because B-players only hire other B-players.
    - pyb 3y ago
      They know who these A players are but are afraid to hire them.
- soulbadguy 3y ago
  This is in my opinion very wrong, you will end up just selecting for a sub population which might or might have the qualities you are looking for. You seem to be confusing volume of work and passion for skill. Some of the best engineers i know will are very diligent about work life balance (i guess you call that clock in/sign out), do not have publicly visible git hub because in their spare time they are either with their families/communities or enjoying other non tech related hobbies. A good programmer (from an employer perspective) is first and foremost a professional, passion and loving doing stuff is good but can only get so so far. I know a lot of the passionate programmer who basically suck. > There are obvious clowns in the industry Agree, and the worst seem to be the one thinking they have this magical/predictive ability to discern talent based on their limited life experience.
duxup 3y ago
Isn't that often a case of "What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months."? Companies with all their bureaucracy are often slow, but that bureaucracy also isn't entirely superfluous, and frankly I don't know if any of this was on any given company's list of things to do. Not sure anyone beat anyone to the punch here.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Yes, it is. Such a case. A team should be dependent on what needs to be implemented. For “boring” and “well-trot” stuff that people can just do on autopilot, sure, that scales. For projects with zero obvious paths, an experienced and lean team is necessary. I have wasted too much time for superficial CRs, and hand-holding people who didn’t provide value.
justinclift 3y ago
> ... 2 people can outproduce even the largest companies. Only if they're not including documentation. Or maybe only very, very, very minimal documentation. If you want full documentation, translated to a bunch of languages, then (for now at least) you'll need more than those 2 people.
- rob74 3y ago
  Fortunately, in the case of a GPU driver, you don't need a lot of documentation beside the standard it implements...

misterbishop 3y ago

A rational economic system would eliminate the distinction between education and production so that people are constantly learning/improving while occasionally contributing to massive breakthroughs. We systemically under-develop every single human being on a global basis right now.

nxobject 3y ago
Everyone deserves an experience like that, at the very least – everyone deserves to be in a position where they have the opportunity to really enquire, or engineer, or know what it's like to solve new problems. It really is a good purpose that education could meet.
- Buttons840 3y ago
  I'm frustrated that "good management" involves breaking things down so small that there is no room for enquiry or engineering. Jira ticket #5229 "Port get_order_* API" doesn't leave much room for problem solving.
  - azinman2 3y ago
    It’s almost like business needs come first
    - Buttons840 3y ago
      Is there a world where we put people's needs first?
Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
Really? There are tons of people who learn while working, which is what I assmue you are advocating for rather than literally "eliminat[ing] the distinction between education and production," which would include school children working. This is especially true in the top end of fields like medicine. Surgeons create and learn new surgeries, for example. And I don't think Sergey Brin took a course on how to create Google in university, and the Google engineers did not learn how to scale it there either. See also the massive research arms of Google et al. So "every single human being" is trivialy false. But even in the general case, college does not directly prepare you for your profession (nor is it meant to) and you are expected to learn on the job. And if what you say is true that you are not learning while working there would be no reason for companies to seek employees with experience.

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

Yeah, that's definitely not true. You'll know when you interview them and they have extensive contributions to open source, an active GitHub or GitLab account, can show you things they're proud of having made in their spare time, can talk at length about technologies and implementation details none of your other candidates can, can show you their participation in mailing lists, etc. There are a billion obvious signals compared to the people who clock in at 8 AM, sign out at 5 PM, and argue with your teammates about problems that entire swaths of engineers consider rudimentary: understanding how to write patches in readable ways, not screwing up git logs, not submitting PRs 10k SLOC long with no explanation as to how the automated output was created for replication and verification. There are obvious clowns in the industry, and people who really love doing this stuff, and you can figure out who they are in a 5 minute conversation. It really insults people when you tell them this, because yes, there are absolutely people that work harder and longer than you because they want to and enjoy it--they don't just go home and watch Netflix.

hotdogscout 3y ago
And a lot of times companies won't hire these passionate people.
- andrewmcwatters 3y ago
  They don't even know who they are because B-players only hire other B-players.
  - pyb 3y ago
    They know who these A players are but are afraid to hire them.
soulbadguy 3y ago
This is in my opinion very wrong, you will end up just selecting for a sub population which might or might have the qualities you are looking for. You seem to be confusing volume of work and passion for skill. Some of the best engineers i know will are very diligent about work life balance (i guess you call that clock in/sign out), do not have publicly visible git hub because in their spare time they are either with their families/communities or enjoying other non tech related hobbies. A good programmer (from an employer perspective) is first and foremost a professional, passion and loving doing stuff is good but can only get so so far. I know a lot of the passionate programmer who basically suck. > There are obvious clowns in the industry Agree, and the worst seem to be the one thinking they have this magical/predictive ability to discern talent based on their limited life experience.

duxup 3y ago

Isn't that often a case of "What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months."? Companies with all their bureaucracy are often slow, but that bureaucracy also isn't entirely superfluous, and frankly I don't know if any of this was on any given company's list of things to do. Not sure anyone beat anyone to the punch here.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
Yes, it is. Such a case. A team should be dependent on what needs to be implemented. For “boring” and “well-trot” stuff that people can just do on autopilot, sure, that scales. For projects with zero obvious paths, an experienced and lean team is necessary. I have wasted too much time for superficial CRs, and hand-holding people who didn’t provide value.

justinclift 3y ago

> ... 2 people can outproduce even the largest companies. Only if they're not including documentation. Or maybe only very, very, very minimal documentation. If you want full documentation, translated to a bunch of languages, then (for now at least) you'll need more than those 2 people.

rob74 3y ago
Fortunately, in the case of a GPU driver, you don't need a lot of documentation beside the standard it implements...