5 ms·

This will never, ever, ever happen. There is too much money, for both sides, in pretending this isn't true. The business side has been entrusted with a lot of

This will never, ever, ever happen. There is too much money, for both sides, in pretending this isn't true. The business side has been entrusted with a lot of money, its own or someone else's. Success has already been achieved. As such, it approaches things from a mindset of risk reduction. And the absolute worst thing possible, from a risk-reduction standpoint, is creative work. It's unpredictable, you don't know when you've got an end product, and it involves dealing with workers who have egos, who often work on things you don't understand. It is unmanageable, which obviously troubles those whose job it is to manage. The most common approach, so far, has been to ignore this scary possibility: Keep projects as low-level as possible, spread responsibility far and wide (to reduce risk, not for optimal efficiency), and keep everyone wearing business casual. Developers are (often) in the weird position of Ozzy Osbourne and other rock stars: potheads whose potheadery became valuable. What the developers know, however, is that businesses don't really want what they have to offer. They don't want to see the full effect of a bad trip. For every Bieber who turns crappy branding to gold in the teen girl demographic, there's Joe Concept Artist who's experimenting with some new grooves, but will never catch on. For every Zuckerberg who can bang out a social network in PHP, there's some dedicated open-source hacker whose dream is to make Lisp accessible to the common man. And yet: the money guys are offering money. Just swallow your pride, play "Stairway to Heaven"[1] at the wedding, and pretend you've never had crazy eyes when talking about homoiconicity, and the rent will be paid. [1]Nothing against the song.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
marktangotango 13y ago
Love this reply, it's a summary of cold hard business reality. Seems cynical, but pragmatic and jives with everything I've witnessed. Maybe the parent is coming from a perspective of fostering the next Whatsapp, were 32 people create $16 billion+ in 'value' from within an existing business?
dasil003 13y ago
I love this comment, but it's not the whole story. Mark Zuckerberg made his billions because he built his own company. Musicians do not necessarily need to do this (although it helps them avoid getting screwed), why does Ozzy Osbourne make bank working for other people? Because his value is readily identifiable. You can see his ticket and album sales and TV ratings right in front of you. Everyone can watch his act and evaluate it. The problem for programmers are that their talent is extremely difficult to evaluate. The best programmers will build a system that avoided so many problems which management will never even have a clue could have happened. Meanwhile, a "rock star" might come in and bang out a prototype that looks so slick and is complete in such a short time that management thinks he is god's gift to programming even if under the hood the code is unintelligible and unmaintainable; when phase two modifications are a disaster, the blame could fall to the new programmer who is objectively much better but is saddled with a terrible technical debt that no one knew about. It's a classic market for lemons. So management is constantly worried that they have lemons. Giving space for creativity would be much more of a possibility if it was easier to identify the programmers who deserved it.
chris_mahan 13y ago
Amen Brother Amen!
edgarallenbro 13y ago
As a dev who also sings for a cover band, this post so completely describes my life its scary. But, I have a bit of a different philosophy. I think that if you really love something, you'll not only do it for free, but pay to be able to do it. There are some people who love coding so much that you can't get them to stop. I am not one of those people. I love it enough that I can stand being at my job for 40 hours a week, and I enjoy the time I spend there. What I really love is Rock & Roll. When I was in high school, I footed the bill for all the tickets my band couldn't sell just for the chance to play on the same stage in Hollywood that a bunch of my idols had played on. Now I play in a band that plays 90's prog metal covers, something that someone from an 80s/90s pop cover band said no one would ever care about and that we could never get paid for. He was wrong. People actually love us because instead of just settling for doing what paid, we did what we love, and it just so happens that there was a need for what we love. We're doing our first paid gig in a few weeks.
marcosdumay 13y ago
Well, what you are stating does reflect reality, and that sucks. Pretending otherwise does not make software development predictable, does not make developers' ego disappear, and does not make management capable of understanding what's going on. But pretend we do. And when everything goes contrary to the expected we make sure that blame is equally distributed so that no party has a right to complain.
mstone4 13y ago
Say one is starting a software company. How does she go about structuring it to take this into account? What are things which are inherently a problem and what things creating problems because it is business as usual.
- Duhck 13y ago
  As someone starting a hardware company with amazing software as part of the experience, I am battling the same problem(s). I want to hire creatives who don't need to be delegated to, and can own full cycle of tasks on their own. I have been doing tons of research in the last two months and a lot of soul searching trying to figure out precisely what makes me tick. The truth is, every startup WANTS to hire entrepreneurial developers, but rarely let them be entrepreneurs. In going through this process on my own, for the second time, it is clear that if I want to hire people like me, I have to treat them like I treat myself. Trust them, give them freedom, and be willing to ask for help when necessary.
- dropit_sphere 13y ago
  I knew someone was going to ask this. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I have thought about this a lot. First: software is nearly always a dicey proposition. There are so many variables that it's just impossible to predict much about it with any regularity. The best approaches that I've seen so far accept this, and say, "Trial and error? So be it: we will do trial and error as best as it can possibly be done." YC and the lean startup model (aim low, accept that most things will fail) are good examples. The other approach is the "tried, no error" method, which cares intensely about the past. Hiring a web developer? Portfolio first, examples of use of specific technologies, examples of specific features. Find no one who meets your exact qualifications, and proceed to either a)raise salaries a lot, and constantly (banks, hedge funds), or b) complain to Congress about a "talent shortage" (everyone else). I think YC is the better model, and is a sort of company-less version of michaelochurch's "open allocation." The key insight is: if you want 10x engineers to ride up on their white horses and save you, you can't presume to tell them what to do. They're cars, not faster horses. Beating a car with a whip won't make it go faster---and this is a feature, not a bug. To get the best out of developers, you have to accept that they bring risk, and manage around that, rather than blindly trying to reduce it. That's why I think Apple is really fucking smart to have a huge cash cushion like they do: with that cushion., it frees you to go for long shots. Apple is nearly riskless in its financials, and so can afford to be very risky in its product development process. If I were starting a software company, and knew exactly what I wanted to build, I'd hire people with proven track records, pay them a bazillion dollars each, and give them zero autonomy. Or, I'd hire a bunch of college dropouts who've obssessed over some kernel of good ideas (Tufte, Hickey, FRP, ML), pay them nothing, and let them run wild (this is basically YC's business model). If you're really serious about this---and I think it's worth it to be---I'd read everything on michaelochurch's blog. He exaggerates, has a chip on his shoulder, uses weird analogies, and has a better understanding of these issues than anyone I can think of.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

marktangotango 13y ago

Love this reply, it's a summary of cold hard business reality. Seems cynical, but pragmatic and jives with everything I've witnessed. Maybe the parent is coming from a perspective of fostering the next Whatsapp, were 32 people create $16 billion+ in 'value' from within an existing business?

dasil003 13y ago

I love this comment, but it's not the whole story. Mark Zuckerberg made his billions because he built his own company. Musicians do not necessarily need to do this (although it helps them avoid getting screwed), why does Ozzy Osbourne make bank working for other people? Because his value is readily identifiable. You can see his ticket and album sales and TV ratings right in front of you. Everyone can watch his act and evaluate it. The problem for programmers are that their talent is extremely difficult to evaluate. The best programmers will build a system that avoided so many problems which management will never even have a clue could have happened. Meanwhile, a "rock star" might come in and bang out a prototype that looks so slick and is complete in such a short time that management thinks he is god's gift to programming even if under the hood the code is unintelligible and unmaintainable; when phase two modifications are a disaster, the blame could fall to the new programmer who is objectively much better but is saddled with a terrible technical debt that no one knew about. It's a classic market for lemons. So management is constantly worried that they have lemons. Giving space for creativity would be much more of a possibility if it was easier to identify the programmers who deserved it.

chris_mahan 13y ago

Amen Brother Amen!

edgarallenbro 13y ago

As a dev who also sings for a cover band, this post so completely describes my life its scary. But, I have a bit of a different philosophy. I think that if you really love something, you'll not only do it for free, but pay to be able to do it. There are some people who love coding so much that you can't get them to stop. I am not one of those people. I love it enough that I can stand being at my job for 40 hours a week, and I enjoy the time I spend there. What I really love is Rock & Roll. When I was in high school, I footed the bill for all the tickets my band couldn't sell just for the chance to play on the same stage in Hollywood that a bunch of my idols had played on. Now I play in a band that plays 90's prog metal covers, something that someone from an 80s/90s pop cover band said no one would ever care about and that we could never get paid for. He was wrong. People actually love us because instead of just settling for doing what paid, we did what we love, and it just so happens that there was a need for what we love. We're doing our first paid gig in a few weeks.

marcosdumay 13y ago

Well, what you are stating does reflect reality, and that sucks. Pretending otherwise does not make software development predictable, does not make developers' ego disappear, and does not make management capable of understanding what's going on. But pretend we do. And when everything goes contrary to the expected we make sure that blame is equally distributed so that no party has a right to complain.

mstone4 13y ago

Say one is starting a software company. How does she go about structuring it to take this into account? What are things which are inherently a problem and what things creating problems because it is business as usual.

Duhck 13y ago
As someone starting a hardware company with amazing software as part of the experience, I am battling the same problem(s). I want to hire creatives who don't need to be delegated to, and can own full cycle of tasks on their own. I have been doing tons of research in the last two months and a lot of soul searching trying to figure out precisely what makes me tick. The truth is, every startup WANTS to hire entrepreneurial developers, but rarely let them be entrepreneurs. In going through this process on my own, for the second time, it is clear that if I want to hire people like me, I have to treat them like I treat myself. Trust them, give them freedom, and be willing to ask for help when necessary.
dropit_sphere 13y ago
I knew someone was going to ask this. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I have thought about this a lot. First: software is nearly always a dicey proposition. There are so many variables that it's just impossible to predict much about it with any regularity. The best approaches that I've seen so far accept this, and say, "Trial and error? So be it: we will do trial and error as best as it can possibly be done." YC and the lean startup model (aim low, accept that most things will fail) are good examples. The other approach is the "tried, no error" method, which cares intensely about the past. Hiring a web developer? Portfolio first, examples of use of specific technologies, examples of specific features. Find no one who meets your exact qualifications, and proceed to either a)raise salaries a lot, and constantly (banks, hedge funds), or b) complain to Congress about a "talent shortage" (everyone else). I think YC is the better model, and is a sort of company-less version of michaelochurch's "open allocation." The key insight is: if you want 10x engineers to ride up on their white horses and save you, you can't presume to tell them what to do. They're cars, not faster horses. Beating a car with a whip won't make it go faster---and this is a feature, not a bug. To get the best out of developers, you have to accept that they bring risk, and manage around that, rather than blindly trying to reduce it. That's why I think Apple is really fucking smart to have a huge cash cushion like they do: with that cushion., it frees you to go for long shots. Apple is nearly riskless in its financials, and so can afford to be very risky in its product development process. If I were starting a software company, and knew exactly what I wanted to build, I'd hire people with proven track records, pay them a bazillion dollars each, and give them zero autonomy. Or, I'd hire a bunch of college dropouts who've obssessed over some kernel of good ideas (Tufte, Hickey, FRP, ML), pay them nothing, and let them run wild (this is basically YC's business model). If you're really serious about this---and I think it's worth it to be---I'd read everything on michaelochurch's blog. He exaggerates, has a chip on his shoulder, uses weird analogies, and has a better understanding of these issues than anyone I can think of.