6 ms·

So what blogs would a modern programmer read? I learned a lot from Joel, and I am not really aware of any blog that compares. I don't get why it is supposedly

So what blogs would a modern programmer read? I learned a lot from Joel, and I am not really aware of any blog that compares. I don't get why it is supposedly a bad thing to judge people by their preferences, either. Why shouldn't I prefer to mingle with people who like the same things as I do? By definition, I probably wouldn't like the things those other people like, which would make for awkward dinner conversations and so on (what if they cherish Michael Bolton????). It's good to sometimes leave the filter bubble, but maybe hiring (where you will be stuck with somebody for years) is not the right place for it.

lilsunnybee 12y ago
So basically you don't really believe that diversity and social mobility are important with regards to the workplace.
- facepalm 12y ago
  I am asking you why you think it is important. I am not really interested in "beliefs". It seems curious that it is automatically assumed that diversity is beneficial. As I said, maybe there is a reason why your pals are your pals and you work better together with them than with strangers. I guess I believe that a company does not have a moral obligation to foster diversity and social mobility. It is possible that a company can benefit from that, though (ie wider candidate pool - lower wages, and so on).
  - tempodox 12y ago
    I am asking you why you _think_ it is important. I am not really interested in "beliefs". Technically, asking someone why they think <anything>, is asking about their believes. Does that seem logical to you?
    - facepalm 12y ago
      Well you can give some reasons for your beliefs. Sure, at the end you probably always arrive at some core belief that is the basic for everything. But that core (axioms) might be more or less deep. You are asking me to believe something at face value, just because it is politically correct.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Sounds a bit like NRx. Here's a Bell Labs story from Richard Hamming about office doors being open or closed. The metaphor is hopefully clear. From http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html: "Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame."
    - facepalm 12y ago
      This is something completely different.
  - coriny 12y ago
    There's been quite a bit of research into group composition and dynamics and their effect on problem solving. In short, the main body of research seems to suggest that diverse groups show a higher group intelligence than homogeneous groups (have a search on google scholar). This is likely to do with a diverse group having a wider range of experiences, and more view points, to draw on in solving a problem. Ultimately, it's not about who you work better with, but how the group as a whole performs. Secondly, if you can only work with people you would be close friends with, you are massively reducing the talent pool available to you. If multiple companies are behaving the same way then you will be paying more for less skilled staff. Meanwhile it's hard to see what the benefit of hiring from such a limited pool is? They're your work colleagues, not your party buddies, so who cares if you don't want to go to the same clubs? Just hire good professional people, surely? If they're pros, then any intra-group conflicts are manageable.
    - facepalm 12y ago
      That's just a handwavy reply (look up the research). I know the kind of research, and it is very hard to separate the ideologically motivated one from the worthwhile ones. "Just hire good professional people, surely?" So why have any hiring process at all, if it doesn't matter who works for/with you? Some people realize they spend most of their waking hours at work, so they want to get along with the people they work with.
      - coriny 12y ago
        I don't know what's going on with the 'reply' button, but I don't seem to be able to reply to your latest comments. Firstly, "google it", well actually "google scholar" it. Go to the public research body rather than the general internet and spend some time finding some reviews (I mean proper peer-reviewed reviews), look for ones that are highly cited and ~5-10 years old. Then start following up, with standard procedures. This seems an important topic to you, and you're unwilling to follow the modern wisdom - which is completely fine, no criticism from me over that. So I would recommend spending at least a couple of weeks on this, go down to the primary experiments that the reviews draw on and see what the researcher's are really debating with each experiment. Look how the experiments being done have informed recent reviews and why viewpoints are changing. Make sure everything you're reading is peer reviewed, or you will waste a lot of time. Without two years+ in a subject, filtering the bull is hard. I would also be very careful about whether the researchers are indirectly or directly being paid by the recruitment industry rather than centrally funded, since commercial funding makes the validity of the results more uncertain. So I'm not saying "Google it". I'm saying do some bare minimum reading on the research corpus. ----- Just to go back to the above message. I'm not saying have no hiring process, obviously you need to evaluate the candidate. But for me, once I've checked for egregious personality flaws, they don't need to be my friends. Think of it this way: falling out with friends is terrible and likely to be very destructive to morale on your team - people will take sides and within the space of an hour your company has been ripped apart. Office politics will be much greater, while bad decisions based on emotion - "can't fire him, we had a real heart to heart last night", "let's do this because I like x more than y" are much more likely. If you're pros, then melodrama becomes much less likely. Furthermore, you know you've been hired to be great at your job rather than because you behave in a certain way. Better motivation to focus on the job rather than the politics.
  - coriny 12y ago
    I don't seem to be able to reply to your reply to me further down the thread. So I'm just going to ask one question: "What is the point of asking for hard data when you're going to dismiss it since it doesn't agree with you?" If you don't believe the body of research, you are not going to agree with anyone's opinions here (unless of course they match your own). The result has been repeated ad nauseum, it's not exactly hard science, though getting into the precise details is. Otherwise, the old mantra is, if you don't believe it, try it yourself.
    - facepalm 12y ago
      I think the deeper nested a comment is, the longer it takes for a reply button to appear. It's a HN heuristic, they think deeply nested threads are possibly flame wars and they want to slow them down.
  - gclaramunt 12y ago
    > It seems curious that it is automatically assumed that diversity is beneficial Have you ever played D&D, Warcraft, or any RPG ? What happens to a party where all the characters are the same type?
Ma8ee 12y ago
Are you hiring a pal or a professional? Maybe it's useful to have someone different than you who can spot a different kind of flaws than you in the latest fad framework. Who gives a damn if it is Michael Bolton in someone else's earphones.
- facepalm 12y ago
  Some people seem to expect more from their job than just a place in a cubicle where they can do their duty for 8 hours and then go home. They want to have fun, be together with cool people and so on. If you can't bond over music, there is one fun factor less (btw Michael Bolton was a reference to the movie "Office Space"). If you manage to run your company as a factory where individuality doesn't matter, only code output or whatever, good for you. I don't see why it should be the go-to model for everyone, though. I seem to remember blog posts about the music system at GitHub. Not sure if they play music over speakers? If anybody would put Michael Bolton on, the feelgood atmosphere might receive a serious dent. Btw I am not a recruiter.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    What if their taste in music or people changes, as their non-work social circle evolves? Do they become less desirable employees?
    - facepalm 12y ago
      It's not impossible, is it? Companies fire people they had employed for years all the time. Friends drift apart all over the world, all the time, too. And I never said you should hire based on musical taste, just that it is possibly a relevant data point.
  - discreteevent 12y ago
    "If you manage to run your company as a factory where individuality doesn't matter". - You don't see the irony of this in the context of your argument for rejecting people because they have different musical taste? (not programming language preference but musical taste). The point of the article and its title "mirrortocracy" is that these people are building clones of themselves because of their narrowmindedness and that's increasing their chances of failure. This is no different than any narrowminded and now dead organisation of the past that failed to survive because they couldn't take on people who weren't "the right type". As a result they failed to even find out what they don't know, let alone how to fix it and were completely surprised when history passed them by and they became the butt of the joke. (Mind you the 42 floors article is a parody in itself so we don't have to wait for the joke)
JonnieCache 12y ago
> (what if they cherish Michael Bolton????) I can only imagine you'd have to kill them with the soup spoon to save yourself.
watwut 12y ago
Are you hiring programmer or drinking buddy? I would expect him to read blogs/news sites related to technology he used in past, because it basically means he educates himself about technology he uses. Other than that, he can read what he please. I have no reason to care whether his knowledge came from business book, programming book, Joels blog, random browsing or coursera videos, as long as that knowledge is solid (relatively to position he is taking). There is nothing awkward about dinner conversation with a person with different preferences, unless you lived in mono-culture whole your life. Politely state that you do not like Michael Bolton and optionally specify what you like. For some reason, people always managed to find things to talk about, even as hiring managers did not cared about leisure time readings or movie preferences. And seriously, most of your time together should be spend working, not chatting about music. If startups really focus on dinner conversations more then on product and sales, then they are as dysfunctional as big bad corporations. I admit that there are types of personalities I had hard time to work with, but the problem was not in us reading different blogs nor using different programming language nor movies nor music.
- facepalm 12y ago
  But isn't there a basic curiosity in some people? I have a hard time imagining somebody who truly cares about programming to learn about Joel's blog and not devouring it (I mean the earlier days, when it was still about programming). I could let it pass if they never heard about Joel, but they know lots of other interesting stuff. Or anything else, really - it is the basic difference between somebody just doing their job and somebody curious about everything. If somebody is a Java developer and only reads about Java programming, he might be a good fit for some jobs. But I am different - I constantly read about new programming languages and development trends. Why should it be good for me to work with somebody who only cares about Java? And what would you take about during lunch - Java development? I am not saying you should hire based on musical taste, but I am waiting for a solid argument for why you shouldn't. More specifically: why is "hire who you know/is like you" supposed to be a bad heuristic? If you know you yourself are efficient, it seems likely somebody like you is also sufficient. At least it seems more likely than that a random stranger (or somebody who explicitly isn't like you) is efficient. Please show me data to the contrary if you disagree with that heuristic (especially, as I said in my first comment, as nobody really seems to have a clue how to hire). Back to Joel: it seems more likely that somebody who knows Joel is a good programmer than somebody who doesn't know Joel. Would you disagree with that assessment? Look at it in reverse: how would a good programmer not know about Joel's blog?
gaius 12y ago
I too used to be into Joel. Then I realized two things. Firstly, I didn't know a single person who used any Fog Creek products. And secondly that it simply was not credible that top-notch programmers would choose to work on something as dull as a glorified time sheet system. Nowadays, I would consider evangelising Joel to be a red flag for inexperience.

lilsunnybee 12y ago

So basically you don't really believe that diversity and social mobility are important with regards to the workplace.

facepalm 12y ago
I am asking you why you think it is important. I am not really interested in "beliefs". It seems curious that it is automatically assumed that diversity is beneficial. As I said, maybe there is a reason why your pals are your pals and you work better together with them than with strangers. I guess I believe that a company does not have a moral obligation to foster diversity and social mobility. It is possible that a company can benefit from that, though (ie wider candidate pool - lower wages, and so on).
- tempodox 12y ago
  I am asking you why you _think_ it is important. I am not really interested in "beliefs". Technically, asking someone why they think <anything>, is asking about their believes. Does that seem logical to you?
  - facepalm 12y ago
    Well you can give some reasons for your beliefs. Sure, at the end you probably always arrive at some core belief that is the basic for everything. But that core (axioms) might be more or less deep. You are asking me to believe something at face value, just because it is politically correct.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Sounds a bit like NRx. Here's a Bell Labs story from Richard Hamming about office doors being open or closed. The metaphor is hopefully clear. From http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html: "Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame."
  - facepalm 12y ago
    This is something completely different.
- coriny 12y ago
  There's been quite a bit of research into group composition and dynamics and their effect on problem solving. In short, the main body of research seems to suggest that diverse groups show a higher group intelligence than homogeneous groups (have a search on google scholar). This is likely to do with a diverse group having a wider range of experiences, and more view points, to draw on in solving a problem. Ultimately, it's not about who you work better with, but how the group as a whole performs. Secondly, if you can only work with people you would be close friends with, you are massively reducing the talent pool available to you. If multiple companies are behaving the same way then you will be paying more for less skilled staff. Meanwhile it's hard to see what the benefit of hiring from such a limited pool is? They're your work colleagues, not your party buddies, so who cares if you don't want to go to the same clubs? Just hire good professional people, surely? If they're pros, then any intra-group conflicts are manageable.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    That's just a handwavy reply (look up the research). I know the kind of research, and it is very hard to separate the ideologically motivated one from the worthwhile ones. "Just hire good professional people, surely?" So why have any hiring process at all, if it doesn't matter who works for/with you? Some people realize they spend most of their waking hours at work, so they want to get along with the people they work with.
    - coriny 12y ago
      I don't know what's going on with the 'reply' button, but I don't seem to be able to reply to your latest comments. Firstly, "google it", well actually "google scholar" it. Go to the public research body rather than the general internet and spend some time finding some reviews (I mean proper peer-reviewed reviews), look for ones that are highly cited and ~5-10 years old. Then start following up, with standard procedures. This seems an important topic to you, and you're unwilling to follow the modern wisdom - which is completely fine, no criticism from me over that. So I would recommend spending at least a couple of weeks on this, go down to the primary experiments that the reviews draw on and see what the researcher's are really debating with each experiment. Look how the experiments being done have informed recent reviews and why viewpoints are changing. Make sure everything you're reading is peer reviewed, or you will waste a lot of time. Without two years+ in a subject, filtering the bull is hard. I would also be very careful about whether the researchers are indirectly or directly being paid by the recruitment industry rather than centrally funded, since commercial funding makes the validity of the results more uncertain. So I'm not saying "Google it". I'm saying do some bare minimum reading on the research corpus. ----- Just to go back to the above message. I'm not saying have no hiring process, obviously you need to evaluate the candidate. But for me, once I've checked for egregious personality flaws, they don't need to be my friends. Think of it this way: falling out with friends is terrible and likely to be very destructive to morale on your team - people will take sides and within the space of an hour your company has been ripped apart. Office politics will be much greater, while bad decisions based on emotion - "can't fire him, we had a real heart to heart last night", "let's do this because I like x more than y" are much more likely. If you're pros, then melodrama becomes much less likely. Furthermore, you know you've been hired to be great at your job rather than because you behave in a certain way. Better motivation to focus on the job rather than the politics.
- coriny 12y ago
  I don't seem to be able to reply to your reply to me further down the thread. So I'm just going to ask one question: "What is the point of asking for hard data when you're going to dismiss it since it doesn't agree with you?" If you don't believe the body of research, you are not going to agree with anyone's opinions here (unless of course they match your own). The result has been repeated ad nauseum, it's not exactly hard science, though getting into the precise details is. Otherwise, the old mantra is, if you don't believe it, try it yourself.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    I think the deeper nested a comment is, the longer it takes for a reply button to appear. It's a HN heuristic, they think deeply nested threads are possibly flame wars and they want to slow them down.
- gclaramunt 12y ago
  > It seems curious that it is automatically assumed that diversity is beneficial Have you ever played D&D, Warcraft, or any RPG ? What happens to a party where all the characters are the same type?

Ma8ee 12y ago

Are you hiring a pal or a professional? Maybe it's useful to have someone different than you who can spot a different kind of flaws than you in the latest fad framework. Who gives a damn if it is Michael Bolton in someone else's earphones.

facepalm 12y ago
Some people seem to expect more from their job than just a place in a cubicle where they can do their duty for 8 hours and then go home. They want to have fun, be together with cool people and so on. If you can't bond over music, there is one fun factor less (btw Michael Bolton was a reference to the movie "Office Space"). If you manage to run your company as a factory where individuality doesn't matter, only code output or whatever, good for you. I don't see why it should be the go-to model for everyone, though. I seem to remember blog posts about the music system at GitHub. Not sure if they play music over speakers? If anybody would put Michael Bolton on, the feelgood atmosphere might receive a serious dent. Btw I am not a recruiter.
- walterbell 12y ago
  What if their taste in music or people changes, as their non-work social circle evolves? Do they become less desirable employees?
  - facepalm 12y ago
    It's not impossible, is it? Companies fire people they had employed for years all the time. Friends drift apart all over the world, all the time, too. And I never said you should hire based on musical taste, just that it is possibly a relevant data point.
- discreteevent 12y ago
  "If you manage to run your company as a factory where individuality doesn't matter". - You don't see the irony of this in the context of your argument for rejecting people because they have different musical taste? (not programming language preference but musical taste). The point of the article and its title "mirrortocracy" is that these people are building clones of themselves because of their narrowmindedness and that's increasing their chances of failure. This is no different than any narrowminded and now dead organisation of the past that failed to survive because they couldn't take on people who weren't "the right type". As a result they failed to even find out what they don't know, let alone how to fix it and were completely surprised when history passed them by and they became the butt of the joke. (Mind you the 42 floors article is a parody in itself so we don't have to wait for the joke)

JonnieCache 12y ago

> (what if they cherish Michael Bolton????) I can only imagine you'd have to kill them with the soup spoon to save yourself.

watwut 12y ago

Are you hiring programmer or drinking buddy? I would expect him to read blogs/news sites related to technology he used in past, because it basically means he educates himself about technology he uses. Other than that, he can read what he please. I have no reason to care whether his knowledge came from business book, programming book, Joels blog, random browsing or coursera videos, as long as that knowledge is solid (relatively to position he is taking). There is nothing awkward about dinner conversation with a person with different preferences, unless you lived in mono-culture whole your life. Politely state that you do not like Michael Bolton and optionally specify what you like. For some reason, people always managed to find things to talk about, even as hiring managers did not cared about leisure time readings or movie preferences. And seriously, most of your time together should be spend working, not chatting about music. If startups really focus on dinner conversations more then on product and sales, then they are as dysfunctional as big bad corporations. I admit that there are types of personalities I had hard time to work with, but the problem was not in us reading different blogs nor using different programming language nor movies nor music.

facepalm 12y ago
But isn't there a basic curiosity in some people? I have a hard time imagining somebody who truly cares about programming to learn about Joel's blog and not devouring it (I mean the earlier days, when it was still about programming). I could let it pass if they never heard about Joel, but they know lots of other interesting stuff. Or anything else, really - it is the basic difference between somebody just doing their job and somebody curious about everything. If somebody is a Java developer and only reads about Java programming, he might be a good fit for some jobs. But I am different - I constantly read about new programming languages and development trends. Why should it be good for me to work with somebody who only cares about Java? And what would you take about during lunch - Java development? I am not saying you should hire based on musical taste, but I am waiting for a solid argument for why you shouldn't. More specifically: why is "hire who you know/is like you" supposed to be a bad heuristic? If you know you yourself are efficient, it seems likely somebody like you is also sufficient. At least it seems more likely than that a random stranger (or somebody who explicitly isn't like you) is efficient. Please show me data to the contrary if you disagree with that heuristic (especially, as I said in my first comment, as nobody really seems to have a clue how to hire). Back to Joel: it seems more likely that somebody who knows Joel is a good programmer than somebody who doesn't know Joel. Would you disagree with that assessment? Look at it in reverse: how would a good programmer not know about Joel's blog?

gaius 12y ago

I too used to be into Joel. Then I realized two things. Firstly, I didn't know a single person who used any Fog Creek products. And secondly that it simply was not credible that top-notch programmers would choose to work on something as dull as a glorified time sheet system. Nowadays, I would consider evangelising Joel to be a red flag for inexperience.