4 ms·

I'm totally with you on this. People are confusing laziness with efficiency and smarts. When someone works to make work more efficient, he is still working! By

I'm totally with you on this. People are confusing laziness with efficiency and smarts. When someone works to make work more efficient, he is still working! By definition, a lazy person is unwilling to work (and that includes work that optimizes work). I'd hire a smart hard-working developer over a smart lazy one any day.

aggarwalachal 14y ago
I would definitely hire a smart hard-working developer. But, aren't they little hard to come by? People are lazy because they are not challenged by the things around them.
- frugalfirbolg 14y ago
  The terms lazy and hard-working are used loosely here. I definitely would hire a smart programmer that's not afraid of doing things the 'hard' way when the constraints of the project demand it, but a programmer that too easily falls into doing it the hard-way may not be considering alternatives that are more maintainable long-term, and I've seen enough people get burned out by marathons of working the hard way that some surveys of the technology and pilot projects before jumping in (or just having an experienced specialist on-board) would have saved lives and careers. The point of this article is that some people are lazy in a different way. They aren't lazy because they aren't challenged. They just appear to be lazy because their hands aren't at the keyboard. They're actually the opposite of lazy because they are tackling the additional challenges of evaluating all of the possibilities and trying to find the most expressive and easiest maintained implementation. Don't get me wrong, there's a time and place for a quick and dirty hack session, and sometimes you just need to hard-code the stuff to get the first version out the door, but if you have the luxury of making it right the first time, go for it. Just don't forget to counter-point, "Perfect is the enemy of good".
unimpressive 14y ago
> I'd hire a smart hard-working developer over a smart lazy one any day. http://mail.linux.ie/pipermail/social/1999-October/000483.html http://mail.linux.ie/pipermail/social/1999-October/000483.ht... I'm just going to leave that here...
- aggarwalachal 14y ago
  After I read the first part, I felt really good about the beginner. But after the sequel, I see that this is something which does happen in real life. It is just sad.
- pilgrim689 14y ago
  Showing me this clearly demonstrates the confusion of semantics I`m talking about... Charles, from the parable, is just smarter than Alan. Alan wasn't able to find the simple efficient solution and thought the problem was so complex he had to hire three more employees. He's just an idiot. If you're showing me the article because "yea but Charles played Space Invaders, so he's lazy!". Well, an employee who would have done exactly what Charles did without playing Space invaders would have been a better person to hire...and that is my point.
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    >If you're showing me the article because "yea but Charles played Space Invaders, so he's lazy!". Well, an employee who would have done exactly what Charles did without playing Space invaders would have been a better person to hire...and that is my point. Well yeah. I think you're the one missing the semantics here. Part of the point was that Charles was working for quite a bit longer than his supervisor thinks he did. Besides the space invaders (Which was poor form, and something I would never dream of doing on an hourly wage.) he was in fact planning out the program. (See the time spent scribbling notes.) It just didn't look like it because he wasn't creating a huge fanfare surrounding the process. Alan jumped right in with some hazy OOP sketches and sort of "hacked it out by committee." as he went along. He's lazy because he thought about the problem instead of doing the "straightforward" OOP, headache inducing four module style design favored by Alan.
    - pilgrim689 14y ago
      >la·zy/ˈlāzē/ >Adjective: >-Unwilling to work or use energy: "he was too lazy to cook". >-Characterized by lack of effort or activity. And now you're telling me he's lazy because he "thought about the problem", "worked for quite a bit longer than his supervisor thought" and "planned out the program". What do foresight and smarts have to do with being unwilling to work?

aggarwalachal 14y ago

I would definitely hire a smart hard-working developer. But, aren't they little hard to come by? People are lazy because they are not challenged by the things around them.

frugalfirbolg 14y ago
The terms lazy and hard-working are used loosely here. I definitely would hire a smart programmer that's not afraid of doing things the 'hard' way when the constraints of the project demand it, but a programmer that too easily falls into doing it the hard-way may not be considering alternatives that are more maintainable long-term, and I've seen enough people get burned out by marathons of working the hard way that some surveys of the technology and pilot projects before jumping in (or just having an experienced specialist on-board) would have saved lives and careers. The point of this article is that some people are lazy in a different way. They aren't lazy because they aren't challenged. They just appear to be lazy because their hands aren't at the keyboard. They're actually the opposite of lazy because they are tackling the additional challenges of evaluating all of the possibilities and trying to find the most expressive and easiest maintained implementation. Don't get me wrong, there's a time and place for a quick and dirty hack session, and sometimes you just need to hard-code the stuff to get the first version out the door, but if you have the luxury of making it right the first time, go for it. Just don't forget to counter-point, "Perfect is the enemy of good".

unimpressive 14y ago

> I'd hire a smart hard-working developer over a smart lazy one any day. http://mail.linux.ie/pipermail/social/1999-October/000483.html http://mail.linux.ie/pipermail/social/1999-October/000483.ht... I'm just going to leave that here...

aggarwalachal 14y ago
After I read the first part, I felt really good about the beginner. But after the sequel, I see that this is something which does happen in real life. It is just sad.
pilgrim689 14y ago
Showing me this clearly demonstrates the confusion of semantics I`m talking about... Charles, from the parable, is just smarter than Alan. Alan wasn't able to find the simple efficient solution and thought the problem was so complex he had to hire three more employees. He's just an idiot. If you're showing me the article because "yea but Charles played Space Invaders, so he's lazy!". Well, an employee who would have done exactly what Charles did without playing Space invaders would have been a better person to hire...and that is my point.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  >If you're showing me the article because "yea but Charles played Space Invaders, so he's lazy!". Well, an employee who would have done exactly what Charles did without playing Space invaders would have been a better person to hire...and that is my point. Well yeah. I think you're the one missing the semantics here. Part of the point was that Charles was working for quite a bit longer than his supervisor thinks he did. Besides the space invaders (Which was poor form, and something I would never dream of doing on an hourly wage.) he was in fact planning out the program. (See the time spent scribbling notes.) It just didn't look like it because he wasn't creating a huge fanfare surrounding the process. Alan jumped right in with some hazy OOP sketches and sort of "hacked it out by committee." as he went along. He's lazy because he thought about the problem instead of doing the "straightforward" OOP, headache inducing four module style design favored by Alan.
  - pilgrim689 14y ago
    >la·zy/ˈlāzē/ >Adjective: >-Unwilling to work or use energy: "he was too lazy to cook". >-Characterized by lack of effort or activity. And now you're telling me he's lazy because he "thought about the problem", "worked for quite a bit longer than his supervisor thought" and "planned out the program". What do foresight and smarts have to do with being unwilling to work?