14 ms·

At first (before I RTFA) I was going to come here to disagree vehemently. There are severe founder-quality issues right now and a lot of that has to do with low

At first (before I RTFA) I was going to come here to disagree vehemently. There are severe founder-quality issues right now and a lot of that has to do with low-IQ people who failed out of banking or management consulting getting funded, while actually smart people with less social polish get fuck-all. 140+ IQ doesn't mean much, but I'd fund a 140+ over a well-connected douchebag any day of the year. The problem is that so many not-smart people (Spiegel, Duplan) are getting funded and it's generating such a slew of crap companies that the rising generation (Millennials) may have lost the knowledge necessary to build good ones. Then I RTFA and found that I agree, wholeheartedly. The metaphor he gives is of an overconfident assailant who has a knife, but is untrained and is beaten by a bare-handed opponent. Correctly, we assess our enemies in office politics as being stupider. That VP/NTWTFK (Non-Technical Who-The-Fuck-Knows) doesn't know what a monad is. He probably couldn't write a for-loop to save his own dick. Those bikeshedding "big picture guys" who "do product" aren't intellectually sophisticated people. All that said, they continue to beat the piss out of us in the game of office politics. They do nothing but, somehow, get paid twice as much and get to make a lot of decisions that we ought to be making. As a group, we have to stop fucking moping, figure out why, and change it. Too many software engineers are so self-congratulatory about their intellectual ability, and too easily swayed by bullshit perks, to realize that they're actually getting robbed blind by jerks in The Business who aren't nearly as smart (they don't have the knife) but who've been training at social machination and in dominating other people for as long as we've been studying computers. We have to stop thinking it's "dirty" or undignified or unprofessional to "get political" and figure out a way to get our due. We have to stop putting our heads in the sand and saying "I just want to code". We are a hard-working group (even the smart ones work really hard) but we need to accept that some of that hard work is going to have to involve learning CS 666 (software politics), as ugly as the skill may be, and playing to win, to fucking demolish our enemies instead of having them defeat us.

mtdewcmu 12y ago
That's an astute misreading of the article, but here's my take: the writer clearly must have been successful in his startup, otherwise he wouldn't feel qualified to speak on what counts for success in starting companies. Once you're successful, you have the best of all worlds: you can act as if you had no intellectual advantage, and had to get where you are solely through pluck and hard work. Then you can look down your nose at both groups: the intellectual guys with lousy jobs and the dim-witted stuffed shirts. No one will doubt that you are not both smarter than the geeks and better at decision-making than the decision guys, because the fact remains, you beat the odds and created a successful startup, and you're still rich. So, I think that's the lesson. You can be really smart, or really hard working, but odds are that you don't have your own company and you're not rich, so either way you don't know shit.
foobarian 12y ago
The logic in this comment doesn't really work for me. I like to code, and am thankful that my company enables me to do it most of the time instead of dealing with a bunch of non-coding issues. I really don't want to learn office politics, "play to win" (win at what? I already won), "demolish my enemies" (what makes them my enemies? If they weren't around I'd have to do more of that non-coding crap work) etc. Quoth Tao of Programming, koan 7.1: A novice asked the Master: "In the East, there is a great tree-structure that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with vice presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying 'Go Hence!' or 'Go Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an unnatural entity exist?" The Master replied: "You perceive this immense structure and are disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?"
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  I like to code, and am thankful that my company enables me to do it most of the time instead of dealing with a bunch of non-coding issues. I understand this, but I think that you'll eventually get bored if you can't get a sense of progress out of your work. This requires that you pick your tools and problems. If you're lucky enough to work in an open-allocation environment, and if that persists for 40 years, then that's great and you'll never be bored or frustrated. However, most programmers want their work to be progressive: bigger challenges, more interesting problems, high-impact opportunities. This'll inevitably put you on the battlefield with status quo rent-seekers who hate you just for improving things. Even if you're not a threat to them in anyway, they'll hit you preemptively, just to prove that they can. I really don't want to learn office politics I understand. Who does? How many college kids say, "I want to get out there and be a private-sector politician"? Probably very few. It's a shitty game. It shouldn't exist. But it does, and the only way we can hold it back is if good people are willing to join the fight, and able to win it. what makes them my enemies? If they weren't around I'd have to do more of that non-coding crap work It's not "programmer good, business bad". There are good businesspeople and bad, turncoat programmers. What makes the bad guys bad is not what they do, but the mentality. The bad guys are the ones who see us as overpaid cost centers and peasantry. Decent people managers and entrepreneurs are worth their weight in gold, but very rare: maybe 10% of the tribe. A good manager knows that his job is to be a "sheep dog". His role is to protect the people doing the work, from assaults on all sides, so they can do the work. Whether it's an executive trying to squeeze employees or a low-level employee being a toxic jerk (i.e. making sexist remarks, insulting others' work) a good manager fights that. A bad manager thinks that his reports exist to serve him and that it doesn't go both ways.

mtdewcmu 12y ago

That's an astute misreading of the article, but here's my take: the writer clearly must have been successful in his startup, otherwise he wouldn't feel qualified to speak on what counts for success in starting companies. Once you're successful, you have the best of all worlds: you can act as if you had no intellectual advantage, and had to get where you are solely through pluck and hard work. Then you can look down your nose at both groups: the intellectual guys with lousy jobs and the dim-witted stuffed shirts. No one will doubt that you are not both smarter than the geeks and better at decision-making than the decision guys, because the fact remains, you beat the odds and created a successful startup, and you're still rich. So, I think that's the lesson. You can be really smart, or really hard working, but odds are that you don't have your own company and you're not rich, so either way you don't know shit.

foobarian 12y ago

The logic in this comment doesn't really work for me. I like to code, and am thankful that my company enables me to do it most of the time instead of dealing with a bunch of non-coding issues. I really don't want to learn office politics, "play to win" (win at what? I already won), "demolish my enemies" (what makes them my enemies? If they weren't around I'd have to do more of that non-coding crap work) etc. Quoth Tao of Programming, koan 7.1: A novice asked the Master: "In the East, there is a great tree-structure that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with vice presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying 'Go Hence!' or 'Go Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an unnatural entity exist?" The Master replied: "You perceive this immense structure and are disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?"

michaelochurch 12y ago
I like to code, and am thankful that my company enables me to do it most of the time instead of dealing with a bunch of non-coding issues. I understand this, but I think that you'll eventually get bored if you can't get a sense of progress out of your work. This requires that you pick your tools and problems. If you're lucky enough to work in an open-allocation environment, and if that persists for 40 years, then that's great and you'll never be bored or frustrated. However, most programmers want their work to be progressive: bigger challenges, more interesting problems, high-impact opportunities. This'll inevitably put you on the battlefield with status quo rent-seekers who hate you just for improving things. Even if you're not a threat to them in anyway, they'll hit you preemptively, just to prove that they can. I really don't want to learn office politics I understand. Who does? How many college kids say, "I want to get out there and be a private-sector politician"? Probably very few. It's a shitty game. It shouldn't exist. But it does, and the only way we can hold it back is if good people are willing to join the fight, and able to win it. what makes them my enemies? If they weren't around I'd have to do more of that non-coding crap work It's not "programmer good, business bad". There are good businesspeople and bad, turncoat programmers. What makes the bad guys bad is not what they do, but the mentality. The bad guys are the ones who see us as overpaid cost centers and peasantry. Decent people managers and entrepreneurs are worth their weight in gold, but very rare: maybe 10% of the tribe. A good manager knows that his job is to be a "sheep dog". His role is to protect the people doing the work, from assaults on all sides, so they can do the work. Whether it's an executive trying to squeeze employees or a low-level employee being a toxic jerk (i.e. making sexist remarks, insulting others' work) a good manager fights that. A bad manager thinks that his reports exist to serve him and that it doesn't go both ways.