[HN Gopher] The illegible nature of software development talent
___________________________________________________________________
The illegible nature of software development talent
Author : hackthemack
Score : 105 points
Date : 2025-10-10 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (surfingcomplexity.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (surfingcomplexity.blog)
| hackthemack wrote:
| The content of the article about how do you measure software
| talent hit home with me. I am not saying I am some x10 developer,
| but all the metrics used at the companies I worked at just do not
| capture what makes a good software developer employee.
|
| Today's hiring process feels like you have to go memorize
| algorithms instead of valuing things an employee actually has
| done in the past. And if the thing that was done in the past is
| something older, like Ruby on Rails, or an old PHP project it
| actually has a negative connotations in respect to hire-ability.
| bartread wrote:
| A nit, but Ruby on Rails isn't "old". It's mature. It still
| receives regular updates and release, even major version
| releases.
|
| What it isn't any more is new or trendy. Still pretty widely
| used though, and with good reason.
| fragmede wrote:
| Not pick on Ruby, but is it a good reason? You've got 1
| million lines of code and they're written in Ruby and
| rewriting it would be, ah, untenable. But would ruby be the
| best choice today if you were starting from scratch? Maybe!
| But sheer inertia isn't a good reason in and of itself.
| dasil003 wrote:
| He didn't say inertia, he said mature. It take a while for
| a language/platform to develop a solid ecosystem and
| stabilize. That absolutely has value, and is something you
| can't get out of a new system no matter what novel problems
| it solves.
|
| As far as new apps go, yeah I think it's still pretty
| optimal for a huge swath of web apps, especially for early
| incubation when you have <20 engineers and you need to move
| quick. Not if you need web sockets, or other concurrency /
| performance critical applications though.
| fgonzag wrote:
| Yes, I'd also think it's a great idea to build new apps
| in a language currently undergoing a distribution &
| supply chain war between the interested parties.
| fgonzag wrote:
| Isn't the ruby gems community currently imploding and in the
| middle of a hostile takeover? Also I've read about quite a
| few recent politically aligned actions in the community.
|
| I don't know if I'd call that "mature".
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| It's not just the metrics. Over the years I've come to realize
| that in many cases these companies just sabotage the talent
| they do have. My own performance when I have my own office vs.
| when I didn't is night and day. The possession of an
| uninterruptible space for a few hours a day, of perceived
| privacy (a cubicle is little better than a dog crate)...
|
| And in many of the places where I did not have an office, it
| wasn't because none were available. In most of the jobs I've
| worked, there have been multiple vacant offices going unused or
| becoming junk rooms where they stash old equipment to keep it
| out of the hallways.
|
| Autonomy to solve problems... I don't know how many places I've
| been where it was tacitly supported for people to goof off for
| 20-30 hours a week, but god forbid you put effort into work
| that hadn't been directed from above.
|
| And on and on and on.
| rglover wrote:
| This is what happens when you let people other than the ones
| doing the work do the hiring. Everybody leans on leet code and
| chasing the bleeding edge (buzzwords) because that's as far as
| the HR department's understanding of the technology that pays
| their salary goes.
| jrowen wrote:
| Is it just me or is [il]legible the word of the month somewhere?
| I suddenly keep seeing this word pop up in contexts I would not
| normally associate it with.
| hackthemack wrote:
| I find the use of "illegible" in the title weird myself. To my
| mind, the word they should use is Intangible.
| xbar wrote:
| He is leaning into this month's denotative abuse word:
| illegible.
|
| I prefer "inscrutable" in this context.
| jakewins wrote:
| We live in a small echo chamber :) It seems extremely likely
| the author of this post wrote it after reading the other post
| from the other day.
| jrowen wrote:
| To this point, it is actually wild how we each see a
| different projection of the chamber depending on which
| articles and threads we dive into. As much as I feel like I
| "know" HN, I do marvel at the entire subsections of the
| discourse I'm completely oblivious to, and this is an
| interesting cross-pollination.
| Cyphase wrote:
| This usage originates from Seeing Like a State. There was an HN
| thread the other day as well:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45505539
| tikhonj wrote:
| It's used here as a specific term from _Seeing like a State_
| [1][2], which is one of those books that got popular with a
| specific set of online tech folks. "Legibitility" in that
| particular sense is a very useful concept with no other
| convenient word, so I'm not too surprised it caught on.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State
|
| [2]: available free to read online:
| https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-...
| serallak wrote:
| For what is worth, I read the book this year, after reading
| about it in the blog Bits about Money by patio11.
| alwa wrote:
| James C Scott, a Yale political scientist with an interest in
| agrarian societies, wrote a book _Seeing Like A State_ in 1998.
| He was interested in why state-scale, "scientific" and
| "rational" schemes often fail to improve the outcomes they
| nominally set out to address (and often make them worse).
|
| The book traced a number of case studies supporting the notion
| that large enough systems of control require some degree of
| standardization to implement--for example, to tax stuff, you
| have to know how much stuff there is. Village life might tend
| to have advantages for human well-being, but that doesn't mean
| you'll get that result by sending out troops to force everybody
| out of their traditional structure and into village footprints.
|
| If you're tallying up a nation's agricultural capacity, "Farmer
| John's got a nice-sized patch that's extra fertile but he's
| lazy" doesn't add as well as "corn, 5 acres, Grade B".
|
| In that way of thinking, complexity, nuance, or localized
| idiosyncrasies--where a lot of useful information lives, but
| outside of the standardized spec--essentially becomes invisible
| to the system. Even though it's essential to the social
| phenomenon the system is setting out to regulate.
|
| It's _illegible_ to the centralized governance mechanism, so it
| may as well not exist, as far as that mechanism is concerned.
| No National ID number? You're not a person, go away.
|
| Sean Goedecke recently wrote a blog [1] applying that idea to
| software companies, I imagine that's where the resurgence is
| coming from in these parts :)
|
| [0]
| https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-...
|
| [1] https://www.seangoedecke.com/seeing-like-a-software-
| company/
| jrowen wrote:
| Thank you for the detailed explanation. In that case it makes
| sense because it was actually writing or recordkeeping done
| by a human hand that failed to communicate some pertinent
| bits of information (though in a more abstract sense than
| being physically unable to read the glyphs).
|
| Extending it to observations of natural or emergent phenomena
| seems like a reach for fanciness when "inscrutable,"
| "unclear," "murky," or "poorly understood" would be more
| accurate to me.
|
| Edit: Upon further review, I am coming around to it a bit, in
| the sense of performance reviews looking for the wrong thing,
| but I still think the larger point is about something more
| complex that poor evaluation metrics are just a symptom of
| rather than the cause.
| rzzzt wrote:
| There is a reference to a Ribbonfarm post where the term is
| explored: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-
| idea-call...
|
| I see where they are coming from but still have a hard time
| making the connection between the idea and the word.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| It is interesting, the two best developers I know are on the
| polar opposite of each other, from the outside.
|
| A: Started coding when he was 6 years old, was making 3D games
| from scratch at 12, and sold his first software at 15. Never went
| to college, as he was right in time for the dotcom boom. The man
| just loves coding, and always works on his side projects in his
| spare time, mostly software he finds interesting. At work, he's
| the closest I've seen to a mythical 10x
|
| B: Hadn't written a line code before he switched majors in
| college. Went from having zero experience with programming, to
| being a straight A computer science student, finishing one year
| faster. Best student prize at university for masters, and then a
| Ph.D in record time. Writes flawless code, is a top tier
| architect, and just a machine. Doesn't write a line of code when
| he comes home (at least according to him), basically severs
| himself from work as soon as he leaves work.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| > Hadn't written a code before he switched majors in college.
| Went from having zero experience with programming, to being a
| straight A computer science student
|
| I've met these people before, they're almost always undergrads
| from elite schools that could pick and succeed at anything they
| choose
| fnicfnac wrote:
| I don't think elite school has much to do with talent just
| with how visible the things they are trusted with are.. From
| community college I've met some building things for companies
| too out of the mainstream to understand how unusual their IT
| worker was.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| Pretty much all universes are first and fore-most strong
| people filters from my experience.
|
| The prestigious schools filter up-front based on merit, and
| filter a 2nd time based on the ability to keep up and
| remain diligent to pass the courses. Less famous schools
| only have the 2nd filter, and have more people drop in the
| process that could not keep up.
|
| The quality of education can be very similar, or even favor
| small schools in some subjects based on luck and school
| staff interests. The vast majority of learning at this
| level is made by the student anyway; there is only so much
| a good teacher or expensive teaching resources can do to
| help.
|
| I've talked with interviewers that seemed completely
| uninterested in what courses or major was taken, just the
| fact that someone got through a difficult major as a stamp
| of quality.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| At my undergrad there were 16 4.0s in a CS graduating
| class of about 120. I didn't get close - about a 3.92
| because I'm a poor student too. Grade inflation isn't
| just a thing at elite schools, even my undergrad with a
| 45-55% accept rate
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| If you look at the resumes of anyone at top schools and who
| gets into YC this isn't true, they're simply more
| accomplished before college than the rest of us are after
| (or in my case, ever).
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Doesn't write a line of code when he comes home (at least
| according to him), basically severs himself from work as soon
| as he leaves work.
|
| I'm truly curios what percentage of programmers _do_ write code
| outside of work. I 'd bet the actually percentage is pretty
| low, especially those who've been at it for five years or more.
| I don't know that I ever did, except when I first started.
| Insanity wrote:
| I did for maybe the first 10 years of my career. Then it
| kinda died down because family and other obligations
| increased so had less and less spare time.
|
| Also, the older I'm getting the more I'm prioritizing
| activities that benefit my body. Working out more, home
| cooked meals (so learning to actually cook well instead of
| throwing things together and hoping for the best).
|
| I miss the side projects sometimes. At least I still do AoC
| yearly.
| fragmede wrote:
| Shit, how many programmers barely write code at work anymore
| because that's not what their job is? And I'm not talking
| about new AI things, I'm talking about design docs and
| meetings and OKRs.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I programmed at home as a hobby before I worked in the
| industry. Then, when I worked as a software developer, I
| pretty much stopped entirely because I did enough software
| at work. Finally, I moved over to the dark side to start
| doing product management and project management, and I've
| re-started hobby projects.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| I'm surprised at this expectation.
|
| I work hard to cultivate hobbies outside of programming, but
| inevitably, I find a way to improve that other hobby with
| software. I'm just wired like that I think. I love systems.
| Code is my love language. :)
|
| I'm currently trying to digitize a hopelessly analog
| procedure to calibrate aircraft engine fuel injection
| systems. Rpi, transducers, and python to the rescue! :D
| humanfromearth9 wrote:
| It's a bit like saying from HR employees that they don't
| recruit/fire people after hours, for fun. Or surgeons don't
| operate after hours. Software developer is a job with really
| weird expectations from outsiders. Show me your GitHub! Show
| me your side projects! You can't be good if you are not
| passionate even after a day's work! Devs must have high IQs,
| have autistic traits, a university degree, master algorithms
| and several programming paradigms and are expected to
| simultaneously be able to integrate well in any team with
| average people, while science already identified that this is
| more difficult for such people...
| dasil003 wrote:
| Sure, but there's no single person that believes engineers
| must be all those things, you're conflating many opinions
| to form an impossible litmus test. In reality as the GP
| pointed out: great engineers don't all fit the same mold,
| and frankly neither do all jobs and hiring manager
| expectations.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I don't know man, my parents are surgeons and they're just
| as much vocateurs as I am. I have come home from football
| to see a surgical video on the TV. I cannot imagine being
| something else. Why would I not care about my primary
| thing? My wife is a creative director and she draws and
| paints in her spare time.
|
| There's all kinds of people in the world and I like to work
| with vocateurs. That's an opt-in choice and others can go
| work with others. No harm done.
| Aurornis wrote:
| When I do interviews I like to ask candidates if they want to
| share anything interesting they've made, studied, worked on,
| or played with outside of their jobs. I explain their answer
| can only help, not hurt, as a non-answer is not a negative.
| It's simply an opportunity to bring up something that
| wouldn't normally come up during the work-history driven
| interview.
|
| Very few candidates say they've done any programming outside
| of their jobs. At most, they share something like running
| Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi and using Python to automate
| their house or something. Another common one is to hear about
| how they used an Arduino or Raspberry Pi to accomplish some
| small task.
|
| Very few people say they have side projects. Of those who do,
| when I ask for details most admit it never went far beyond
| the idea phase.
|
| So from what I can deduce, it's very uncommon for programmers
| to have true side projects that go beyond a couple git
| commits worth of code to solve some task, or an idea they had
| that they never followed up on.
| nomel wrote:
| I think this is a rude question to ask, and it would
| reflect negatively on you, the company, and the group
| dynamics, if I were asked it.
|
| It shows an unprofessional and inappropriate interest in
| things unrelated to work, and, from my experience, is a
| good indicator that the person will either micromanage, has
| poor work life balance, or is not socially fit to be a
| manager.
|
| I know that sounds super harsh, but you should seriously
| reconsider. You're going to scare people away. There's a
| power dynamic that you don't seem to be aware of, during
| the interview process. It's not your concern what they do
| with their free time, unless they present it to you,
| unprovoked.
|
| This is from someone who has interviewed hundreds of
| people.
|
| Besides all of that, it opens you up to litigation for
| discrimination, depending on the answer they give. I
| suggest talking with your HR department. Where I am now,
| questions about personal life are strictly prohibited, for
| that reason.
|
| edit: please note the "unprovoked". If people want to share
| the projects they do in their personal time, they will
| include it in their resume as a line item. I've seen it in
| probably 30% of the candidates. It means "ask me about
| these things".
|
| edit: better yet, just rephrase, so it's not a potentially
| uncomfortable probe into personal time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543812
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It shows an unprofessional and inappropriate interest
| in things unrelated to work,
|
| No, it's a chance for candidates to bring up relevant
| experience that might help their candidacy.
|
| The question isn't about things unrelated to work. The
| question is asking if they have any additional experience
| outside of work that might help us better understand
| their skills for their job application. Many people have
| relevant experience for the job that they gained outside
| of work. Asking about that is not only okay, it's a good
| thing.
|
| > and, from my experience, is a good indicator that the
| person will either micromanage, has poor work life
| balance, or is not socially fit to be a manager.
|
| Asking candidates if they have any extra experience to
| share is not an indicator of micromanaging.
|
| Jumping to completely unrelated conclusions and drawing
| extreme assumptions about people is not a good way to
| interpret a question like that.
|
| I explained that the question cannot have any negative
| value to the candidate. It's a chance to bring up extra
| things if they have them and we didn't cover them.
| Literally doing the candidate a favor, not being rude or
| micromanaging.
|
| > It also opens you up to litigation for discrimination,
| depending on the answer they give. I suggest talking with
| your HR department.
|
| Asking candidates to share their work-relevant experience
| does not invite discrimination lawsuits. How are you
| coming up with these interpretations? Legal was involved
| in reviewing our hiring processes, so no need for
| condescending lectures about getting HR involved.
| nomel wrote:
| > Asking candidates to share their work-relevant
| experience does not invite discrimination lawsuits.
|
| I suggest you talk to your HR department. This isn't my
| interpretation, it's that of our cooperate lawyers.
|
| If they say "I just had a kid, I spend time with them",
| is a good example. This should be obvious to you, which
| is further evidence you should not be asking these
| questions.
|
| edit: can't reply directly. No, that's not how it works.
| You being made aware of it, and you _using that
| information_ is enough. Good luck!
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If they say "I just had a kid, I spend time with them",
| is a good example.
|
| Your understanding of these laws is flawed. A candidate
| volunteering information doesn't make the company liable
| for discrimination against them.
|
| It's a common misconception that if topics like having
| kids or being married comes up in an interview then the
| company is liable to be sued for discrimination. It
| should be obvious that a candidate can't entrap a company
| by injecting this information into the interview when it
| wasn't asked. Even if the interviewers do ask, a
| discrimination lawsuit has a much higher bar than the
| topic simply coming up in the interview. It has to be
| demonstrated that the information was used to
| discriminate against the applicant, not just that it was
| discussed.
|
| Your interpretation of my question is also flawed. I'm
| not asking "Tell me what you do in your free time." I'm
| asking them if they have anything outside of work that
| they'd like to share that would help their case.
|
| > I suggest you talk to your HR department.
|
| Please read my entire comment. The legal team reviewed
| our interview process and had no problems with it.
|
| I think maybe your HR department has tried extra hard to
| scare you away from subjects they want to avoid, which
| has led to a misunderstanding of how the law actually
| works. It's common for HR professionals to tell
| interviewers that there are "illegal questions" or that
| if a topic comes up at all then you're going to get sued
| for discrimination. In reality, the legal bar for these
| cases is much higher. HR professionals just want to scare
| interviewers away entirely and drive the point home.
|
| Asking candidates if they have an additional experience
| to share isn't an invitation for discrimination lawsuits.
| I suggest you open your mind a little bit and consider
| that some candidates may have more to offer than appears
| on the bullet points under each job on their resume.
| nomel wrote:
| > Asking candidates if they have an additional experience
| to share isn't an invitation for discrimination lawsuits.
|
| It's the fact that you decided not to hire them, because
| you found out that protected information. It was
| unrelated? Prove it in court. That's the reality of
| discrimination lawsuits.
|
| I think we'll have to agree to disagree.
|
| If you're confident in this, maybe in your next couple of
| interviews try "That last question is something new that
| I'm trying. Do you think it's good, or do you think it's
| too personal?". You'll have to read their body language,
| since the power dynamics will prevent a direct answer,
| for many. If you're not comfortable asking that, then
| that's evidence enough.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It's the fact that you decided not to hire them,
| because you found out that protected information.
|
| Again, you don't understand how this works.
|
| If a candidate runs into your interview room and declares
| that they are a member of 5 protected classes, that
| doesn't automatically open you up to discrimination
| lawsuits.
|
| How is this any different than asking someone about a
| past job and then they answer with "I didn't finish that
| project because I had kids and left for parental leave".
| It should be obvious that a candidate can reveal
| information about having kids for virtually any question.
|
| > It was unrelated? Prove it in court.
|
| Once again, that's not how it works. The onus is on _the
| applicant_ to prove that the information was used for
| discrimination.
|
| A candidate can't claim that a company discriminated
| against them for information they volunteered during an
| interview and then the company loses. They have to
| provide reasonable evidence to proceed to discovery,
| which would have to reveal something substantial that
| showed the information was used to discriminate, such as
| e-mails or chat logs.
|
| > I don't believe you asked your legal department.
|
| Legal was involved. Why do you only believe that _your_
| HR department wants to be involved in hiring processes,
| but _mine_ obviously would not?
|
| If you're not interested in discussing in good faith or
| you only want to ignore what I wrote and inject alternate
| facts, I can't help you.
| nomel wrote:
| I quickly edited that out but you saw it. I don't want to
| dox myself, which is why I removed it. You would trust
| our legal team. It's an opinion shared by every company
| I've ever worked for, except a startup, where they didn't
| know wtf they were doing, and there was no training at
| all: no personal questions that persuades/compels
| protected info. It's trivial to find this online.
|
| To stop focusing on this last point...
|
| > I'm not asking "Tell me what you do in your free time."
| I'm asking them if they have anything outside of work
| that they'd like to share that would help their case.
|
| You are asking them that, in a practically
| indistinguishable way. Again, because of the power
| dynamic you don't seem to be aware of, they _must_ give
| you an answer that explains _why_ , if not. The legally
| appropriate response would be "I prefer not to answer
| what I do in my free time outside of work", which people
| would be uncomfortable, so they're going to be compelled
| to reveal to you why they don't have anything
| interesting, if they don't.
| dekhn wrote:
| I worked for Google for a while and there was a whole set
| of banned questions and topics- for example, when
| interviewing, I was told to never ask where somebody was
| from- that's discriminatory.
|
| Originally I assumed all of this was good-faith advice
| from lawyers. It was only over time that I recognized
| that the leadership at Google continuously got itself in
| trouble by doing illegal things around hiring, and was
| telling interviewers all sorts of stuff that simply
| wasn't supported by law (similarly true for the constant
| warnings about not reading patents, or speculating about
| legal problems in a discoverable medium- it was the execs
| who fucked up, not the employees). I had to unlearn a lot
| when I left for another company.
|
| Please keep asking people questions like this- I like how
| you phrased it: "this can only help, not hurt you".
| nostrademons wrote:
| Luckily you guys can work at different companies and not
| have to interact except on HN.
|
| (Personally I've been on both sides of this - early in my
| career I had a ton of hobby projects, wrote compilers for
| fun, and would often ask _the interviewers_ what was the
| most interesting project they 've worked on, either for
| work or for fun. Now I have a family, work stays at work,
| home stays at home, and I don't really care what my
| reports do on their own time. But different segments of
| the tech industry will fall on different ends of this
| spectrum. Know what you want and don't waste time
| interviewing at places where the culture is dramatically
| different.)
| nomel wrote:
| > and would often ask the interviewers what was the most
| interesting project they've worked on
|
| And that's unprovoked. That doesn't conflict with what I
| said (I intentionally included it). Whenever someone is
| interesting in sharing, _they present the work_
| themselves. They provide their GitHub link, or include it
| on their resume, mention it, etc.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > And that's unprovoked. That doesn't conflict with what
| I said (I intentionally included it).
|
| How is asking a direct question to the candidate
| "unprovoked"? This doesn't make sense.
|
| > Whenever someone is interesting in sharing, they
| present the work themselves. They provide their GitHub
| link, or include it on their resume, mention it, etc.
|
| No, they do not always do this. This isn't a good
| assumption. Asking candidates if they have anything extra
| to share reveals additional projects quite frequently. I
| would know because I do ask.
| nomel wrote:
| I was responding to what above above said, in the context
| of an interviewee:
|
| > and would often ask the interviewers what was the most
| interesting project they've worked on
|
| Above asking, and initiating the conversation, is clearly
| unprovoked.
|
| A interviewer asking them isn't the same as them asking
| an interviewer, where their answer potentially means you
| don't get hired. The interviewer is forcing an answer
| about their free time. It's "provoked".
|
| edit: "you" to "above".
| nostrademons wrote:
| No, you're responding to what _I_ said. There are
| multiple people calling you out here: please try to keep
| the usernames straight when responding.
|
| The point of an interview is to ask questions, and
| particularly in the more freewheeling environment of a
| startup, "what sort of stuff do you like working on?" is
| very much relevant to whether they'd be a fit. Sergey
| Brin would famously ask early applicants to Google "Teach
| me something that I don't know already, about any topic."
| YCombinator's application form, for a long time, had the
| question "Tell us about a time you successfully hacked
| some (non-computer) system to your advantage", and the
| answers were explicitly supposed to be naughty if not
| illegal.
|
| Not everybody works for a big company with a big HR
| department. The tech industry is a broad place.
| nomel wrote:
| Author was irrelevant in my reply. I was responding to
| the context. And come on now, consensus doesn't define
| correctness.
|
| "Teach me something that I don't know already, about any
| topic."
|
| "Tell us about a time you successfully hacked some (non-
| computer) system to your advantage"
|
| This should not surprise you, but those are _perfectly
| fine_. These are very similar to the examples given to us
| for _the appropriate /professional way_ to ask.
|
| That's a good recommendation for the original commenter,
| on how to reword their question. They're not direct
| probes into personal time. I should have included
| something like that in my original reply.
| dekhn wrote:
| You're not contributing anything addition to this thread;
| I recommend dropping it.
| _dain_ wrote:
| _> a non-answer is not a negative_
|
| I don't know how this can be true. Interviewing for a job
| is a zero-sum competition against the other candidates. If
| something isn't a positive, it has to be a negative.
| conartist6 wrote:
| It feels slightly disingenuous. Many engineers do their
| work with a sense of personal duty and pride. Should a
| drive for self-improvement be neglected because it didn't
| happen outside of work hours?
|
| For the years I had paid employment I'm very thankful that
| I didn't make programming my hobby in addition to being my
| work. For the last 5 years it's been both and I wouldn't
| wish that experience on anyone
| ACCount37 wrote:
| The field is pretty big. There are total mercs who only code
| because they get the big $$$ for it and wouldn't write a line
| otherwise, and there are idealist hackers who would keep
| coding 10 hours a day in "starving artist" mode even if they
| couldn't get jack for it. And anything in between.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I spent roughly 25 years writing code for a living while also
| writing code for fun. I think this was pretty normal when I
| got started; coding was neither cool nor especially lucrative
| back then, so the people who were into it were _into_ it, for
| its own sake.
|
| I didn't stop coding in my free time because I stopped
| enjoying it, either, but because I could no longer sustain
| the fantasy that anyone was going to _use_ any of the stuff I
| wanted to build. The level of motivation I feel for a project
| which is not going anywhere is not high enough to sustain me
| for more than a week or two.
| dunham wrote:
| I dabble at home, but it looks nothing like work code. I also
| started writing code for fun as a kid, before doing it
| professionally. I do find it hard to do much after a day of
| work and taking care of family. (I've just been laid off
| after 20 years at my company, so I guess I've got more free
| time now.)
|
| Last year I wrote a self-hosted dependent typed programming
| language, after spending a couple of years helping out with
| Idris and learning how those languages work. I started that
| process because I was pretty burned out and needed something
| stimulating to do.
|
| Before that, it was little things, like code to read various
| binary file formats. E.g. a read-only sqlite implementation,
| code to read realm databases, reading indexed db off of disk
| for various browsers, decoding apple notes database, decoding
| iOS backups.
| dekhn wrote:
| Like you I put an enormous amount of personal free time
| into software engineering in my career. It had massive
| benefits that have paid out in many, many ways.
|
| Some days, when I wrap up work, I feel burnt out and just
| watch TV shows or make food. Other days, I get so into what
| I'm coding (for fun/edification) that I look up and it's
| 10PM. It helps to have a long term view- my expectation is
| that I will be working on projects for a decade or more,
| slowly getting more knowledgeable, so i don't see a need to
| rush or overwork.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It is interesting, the two best developers I know
|
| Over time I've come to appreciate the difference between people
| who are described as the best programmers and people who are
| best at delivering results.
|
| Some times they're one in the same. It's wonderful when you
| work with someone who is both an excellent programmer and
| excellent and delivering results in a team.
|
| Many times I've worked with or even hired people who are
| brilliant developers and praised as being very smart, yet they
| didn't deliver results as well as the average developer on the
| team who diligently gets their work done.
|
| Looking back, some of the most stereotypically brilliant
| developers I've worked with have also been among the more
| difficult to work with. Not all of them, but quite a few. The
| two that come to mind have been bouncing from company to
| company for a long time. They'll always have job offers and be
| able to pass interviews, but actually working with them and
| getting good results is a different story.
|
| One of them even founded a startup with a co-founder, but
| unsurprisingly they broke up less than a year into it. On paper
| he should be the perfect fit to get launch a startup product,
| but working with him is a different matter.
|
| The brilliant devs I know who are great at delivering results
| usually find their way into good positions and good companies
| early in their career and then stay there for a long time.
| jaggederest wrote:
| By analogy, I'm reminded of a skit that we did in school:
|
| A man, on his hands and knees, searching diligently for something
| on the ground.
|
| Another man, walking by, stops to help search. After a few
| moments he asks "what are we searching for?"
|
| The first man replies "My contact lens"
|
| After a minute or two the second man, frustrated, asks "Where did
| you lose it?"
|
| The first man replies "Way over there, but the light is better
| under this streetlamp."
|
| Coding interviews kinda feel like that to me. We can't measure
| what's important, so we'd better measure what we _can_ measure
| extremely rigorously.
| moron4hire wrote:
| It's keys, not contact lenses, and it's an old joke.
| nimish wrote:
| Over a century old!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
| tanseydavid wrote:
| Contact lens is the way I have always heard the joke.
| loverofhumanz wrote:
| In the oldest reliable references from the 1920s, it was a $2
| bill, $1 bill, a watch, and a dime.
|
| So keys and contacts are both modern revisions.
| dang wrote:
| I thought I sensed the implicit presence of the Quote
| Investigator!
|
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/11/better-light/
| loverofhumanz wrote:
| I used the AI, the web, and even tried to verify with
| full page scans but then I realized I have a job.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Does the specific object matter in any way at all?
| moron4hire wrote:
| I just thought it was weird it was framed as "a skit we did
| in school" when it's a literally-ancient-old joke.
| dekhn wrote:
| No. For example, in science most scientists just look where
| the streetlight is, but a small number of people build
| better, stronger lights to search larger areas, and there
| is a tiny number of people who can mysteriously just find
| things in the dark.
| kwk1 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
| immibis wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
| npalli wrote:
| Did nobody ask why you would want to reuse contact lens fallen
| on some grimy ground in the night? Keys, coins, bills, even
| glasses ok, but putting back the contact lens into your eyes
| seems dangerous. I thought some kid might have spoken up :-).
| s1mon wrote:
| Contact lenses used to be a lot more expensive and not
| disposable. They took a long time to get a new set. It was
| like loosing a pair of glasses.
| codyb wrote:
| I'm interviewing for Senior Staff roles and doing quality
| coding interviews and beyond the basics I'm not sure really
| what I'm supposed to ascertain from the format because it is so
| far removed from what is day to day important in the role.
|
| I ask about time complexity, and all the basics, but it's just
| a bunch of malarkey. So I spend more time quizzing them about
| technologies I don't know on their resume and getting something
| out of it for myself. It's easy enough to tell when someone's
| full of shit, but asking them to describe the tradeoffs between
| the technologies they've worked with seems more valuable than
| watching someone sweat-ily cramming out some crap imperative
| code for a toy problem and telling me they got it down to
| nlogn. Oooo ee!
| youainti wrote:
| It might be helpful to look at this classic post by Joel
| Spolsky [0]. He discusses many of the points you brought up.
| I found it most helpful to pull out some of the principles he
| discusses and then ask "What would this look like when
| applied to [job in question]?"
|
| [0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-
| guid...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > We can't measure what's important, so we'd better measure
| what we can measure extremely rigorously.
|
| As much as we like to complain about interviews, the
| alternatives that more accurately reflect the work environment
| are much more strongly hated.
|
| One of the most accurate interviewing methods is a work trial:
| Bring the candidate in for a week and have them work the job.
| Their peers and managers rate their performance.
|
| It's great for revealing how a person works. But think about
| what's required: You would have to take a week off of your
| primary job every time you wanted to interview at another
| company. A company could only interview one candidate per week.
|
| Some companies try this, but it over-selects for unemployed
| young people. They either give up or start bending the rules
| when qualified applicants refuse.
| sdjcse1 wrote:
| I hate performing, but I don't know if there is a framework for
| me or for managers to identify and track such things. The irony
| is that these things would be visible only when they bite us and
| when the work is done in such situation the reward is high, I
| strongly believe it should be other way around because preventing
| something is far greater than fixing something after it goes
| wrong, the sad fact is that it is hard to realize the impact of
| the failure unless it happens and even if highlighted in reviews
| it is overlooked often.
| hackthemack wrote:
| I remember a Doctor Who episode where he said, paraphrasing,
| "You never get credit for the crisis you prevented before it
| happened".
|
| Sort of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox
| androng wrote:
| I think the title of the article should be "invisible" not
| "illegible"
| d-us-vb wrote:
| It was a deliberate word choice by the author. "Illegible"
| conveys that it's difficult to track from the outside. It's a
| clever analogy: illegible hand writing can be read by those who
| are familiar with the scribe.
|
| It's not invisible though: those who work with these kinds of
| engineers easily see how valuable they are.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's not invisible, it's incomprehensible to most would-be
| employers because the information is not in a form that they
| can understand. That's not the same as invisible.
|
| Passing some leetcode challenges is legible to employers, it
| puts applicants in the same buckets and measures them in
| (roughly) the same way. But it's not a good measure of actual
| talent. The real measures, as discussed in the article are out
| there but illegible to those employers.
| lkrubner wrote:
| It's not invisible, because some people can see it. It is
| illegible because the leadership of a large company won't know
| how to interpret it. This particular usage of "illegible" has
| been around for awhile, but is probably best known from the
| book, "Seeing Like A State":
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D2HZXB4/
| dredmorbius wrote:
| "Legibility" is a distinct reference to Tom C. Scott's _Seeing
| Like a State_ , and the tendency of states (or other large
| institutions) to attempt to impose legibility on complex
| problems, domains, or systems, usually in an attempt to manage
| or govern them, but often destroying that which makes them
| valuable in the first place:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State>.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| I think the number of approaches you can take to reach the same
| goal/standard increases with how abstract the work you're doing
| is. SWE is quite abstract.
|
| I don't have the greatest work ethic, I waste time sometimes,
| forget things, am not too organized, etc. It's mostly the fact
| that 1) I do SWE as a hobby and 2) learn obsessively without
| BSing myself that gets me into jobs.
|
| However my teammate at my last job. He probably didnt have the
| same level of intimate knowledge of systems as me. But his work
| ethic was just breathtaking. Mine simply wouldn't compare in a
| million years. Averaged over a large enough period, we both ended
| up doing the same amount of useful work.
|
| Similarly there were others with different "approaches", just
| included the above 2 cases as an example.
|
| Now. It wasn't the best experiment since we helped each other a
| lot. But I came away feeling it's true.
|
| My hypothesis is that in less abstract work, the number of
| approaches is limited, and hiring practices in SWE have just been
| made the same as those jobs.
|
| I don't really complain since I really can't think of a framework
| for hiring for abstract jobs that will yield better results than
| the current one. But who knows, maybe we'll find one.
|
| FWIW, I think leetcode, just one round to bring down the
| applicant count to a number that's possible to interview {hard if
| there are too many, medium if there are few, or just Two Sum to
| weed out folks that can't write a for loop if you have just tens
| of applicants}, and then system design as the main interview, is
| a good system. For system design I would skip the common ones
| like "design a rate limiter/load balancer" stuff that people
| memorize. IMO it's easily possible to create unique system/API
| design questions that match the job somewhat.
| nyeah wrote:
| Well ... a lot of things are invisible if you get all your
| information from popular sources on the web.
| gxs wrote:
| It's almost like the best engineers are, like, people who come in
| all shapes and sizes
|
| Super nice guys, complete assholes, showmen, wallflowers - what
| they have in common is that they are great at making software
|
| There are for sure personally types that are typical in certain
| traits, but we lose site of the fact that these do not tell you
| everything about who a person is
|
| I likewise can give you stories of the best developers I've
| worked with - from Devry graduates, to high school dropouts, to
| HYPE wunderkinds - they come from all walks of life
| OutOfHere wrote:
| The problem here is clearly the one doing the evaluation. Why do
| they even have a job themselves if they're so incapable of
| evaluating correctly?
|
| There exists a quantitative method to correctly evaluate workers:
|
| 1. Collect each worker's work outputs and construct a training
| dataset.
|
| 2. Train an AI model with all work outputs combined.
|
| 3. For each worker, train a model with their respective work
| outputs deleted.
|
| 4. Construct a comprehensive evaluation benchmark over the full
| combined dataset.
|
| 5. For each worker, measure the change in the benchmark's
| performance with the worker's specific model relative to the full
| global model.
|
| 6. Fire the workers that lead to an unexpected improvement in the
| benchmark with their respective worker's model. This means that
| these workers were not contributing in a meaningful way to
| improving the performance over the benchmark. Keep the rest.
| tehjoker wrote:
| This is magical thinking with trendy AI mixed in. Every step
| here has massive assumptions that are just baked in, like can
| their output be quantified in principle? How expensive is it?
| Will the model even be predictive? Can you gain the cooperation
| of workers or even the companies that they work for?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Every invention is considered magical thinking by some until
| it is made possible. Nothing I noted is actually magical or
| prohibited.
|
| As for its feasibility, that's an engineering task. No
| cooperation is necessary from workers. It is in fact much
| more feasible than developing a modern LLM.
|
| As for its cost, various optimizations are possible as with
| LLMs. Also, there are high costs to incorrect classifications
| currently made by management, so high that they can result in
| the disposal of the firm.
| dweinus wrote:
| Ignoring how ridiculous and impractical this idea is, it fails
| to capture some of the most important skills in being a
| developer. Framing real-world problems as code problems.
| Anticipating design issues. Knowing the right trade-off between
| solution correctness, complexity,and effort. Mentoring and
| accelerating others. This is barely different than leetcode
| interviews.
| nomel wrote:
| > Why do they even have a job themselves if they're so
| incapable of evaluating correctly?
|
| The only way for this to _not_ be the case is if the first
| person you hired is the most competent that exists, and can do
| everything already, and therefor accurately measure the anyone
| in front of them. And, that goes on down the hiring chain.
|
| In reality, you'll eventually need an expert in an area _you
| are not an expert in_ , which means you _won 't necessarily
| have the insight_ on the best candidate. Maybe AI can do that
| someday, but definitely not today.
|
| I also think this is what causes large orgs slowly fail: it's
| not only difficult for a person to gauge when another is
| smarter/more capable than them, but a smarter person can look
| _less_ competent to someone hiring, because their answers
| /approach is outside of the known solution space of the
| interviewer. So, you end up with a slow net _decrease_ in
| competence over time.
|
| I've seen it in every org I've been a part of, from startups to
| coorporate. I've definitely misjudged some hires. Trying to
| judge a person, within your time slot, is _hard_. The
| alternatives (like take home, temp to hire, etc) are also
| talent repellent.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| Promotion processes favour people who want to play the promotion
| game. These are rarely if ever the best people but from a certain
| point, the ranks are field with this kind of people anyway so
| they are happy playing together.
|
| You can still do a very meaningful and satisfying career playing
| by your rule if you don't care about striking your ego so much.
| mathattack wrote:
| This is also why talent marketplaces don't work so well.
|
| We can know who is good for our last situation, but it comes with
| bias and is very hard to measure. This is true even for jobs that
| are easier to measure like Sales or Support.
| bironran wrote:
| Heh. That's me. The "no presence" part. About the 10x part, ask
| my colleagues. I want to believe I'm doing some good work but who
| knows.
|
| But the no presence... I've got a kid, a house, a mortgage. I've
| been in software since I was a teenager. Am I still fascinated by
| it? Sure. Will I still spend hours and hours of free time? Nop.
| It long since stopped being a hobby. Right now I like reading and
| listening to audio books, when I have a break from house chores
| and child rearing. I like to cook and experiment in the kitchen.
| The endorphin feedback cycle is so much faster (hours) than large
| scale software (weeks to years). I like to watch interesting
| shows on TV. Write. Coding-wise, I'm invisible outside the
| company I work at.
|
| Not strictly a 9-5, but with a kid I do try to have quality
| family time, so I condense as much as possible to my working day,
| leaving time to be with my loved ones. If there's something
| important I'll participate. If there's a pagerduty alarm I'll
| jump. But otherwise, I'll deal with it tomorrow. I've long since
| learned to identify real emergencies from artificial urgency
| "because there's a milestone deadline!". Sure there is. Like the
| old saying goes "I love deadlines. I love the wooshing sound they
| make when they go by". Is it a customer commitment? No? Then I'll
| work on it Monday morning, right now I'm out.
|
| I value people like that. Being a hero is a young-people game.
| You can't be a hero for years and years and not burn out. I've
| seen that happen. Working every weekend? Then something is wrong
| with the estimation. Or the design. Or whoever is in charge of
| priorities.
|
| God helps me when I look for a job again. I guess I'll have to
| rely on references and hope to hell I'll pass the filtering
| software to actually get someone to look at my application. So
| far I've been lucky. Last time I actually sent CVs was at the
| beginning of my career, as a new grad, 20 years ago. Ever since
| then I was picked out, carried over, invited in by people who
| knew me. Really, really hoping that'll keep being the case.
| binary132 wrote:
| If anything I tend to think that the people who promote
| themselves the most aggressively are the ones who should be
| looked at with the most skepticism.
| neilv wrote:
| Even when companies know they need something more than a normal
| senior developer, they don't necessarily know how to interview
| for that.
|
| This afternoon, I'm leaning towards bowing out of a supposed
| more-than-normal engineering role.
|
| If I wanted a battery of commodity techbro interview performance
| art hoop-jumping, just to be allowed to work at a place... then I
| would've gone to Google 1-2 decades ago, for 2-5 times what this
| place is offering, gotten rich, and then retired... so that I
| could then spend all my time making useful and trustworthy
| software.
|
| I know what it's like to have a good interview "loop" for this
| level of impact role. Both sides of the table seem to value each
| other, ask good questions, focus on getting a sense of what it
| would be like to work together on the products/projects, with the
| team(s), and within the company culture. And see if that's
| something everyone feels really good about doing.
|
| No "I need to haze you to 'understand how you think'". No BS
| performances of Coding Interview, System Design Interview, and
| Behavioral Interview, like every techbro is told they must "prep"
| for. No feeling like the other person might somehow be cheating
| (because you get the impression that they might be lying trash).
| No battery of rituals (in some cases) to the exclusion of people
| who'd be working together actually meeting each other _before_
| everyone has to decide whether to offer /join.
| s1mon wrote:
| This isn't a unique issue with software developers. In many
| fields, there's a distinction between show horses vs work horses.
| A lot of people who spend time tooting their own horn are not
| necessarily the best at what they do. Finding the best people
| often involves word of mouth, not measuring git commits, IMDB
| rankings, design awards, or whatever.
| creer wrote:
| Please maintain your professional social contacts!
|
| It's fine not to have a native interest in that. But it's part of
| the job. No blog or bragging needed. No Linkedin needed even, if
| you really don't want that one. Catalog and maintain some minimal
| contact with these people who have seen your work: bosses,
| colleagues, juniors, vendors, consultants, anyone. Expose a few
| EXTRA people now and then, so they can see your work. This way,
| when you need to find a new job after many years hidden in just
| one department, you will have all these people who moved -
| sometimes frequently - and only wished they could have taken you
| with them at the time.
|
| And that has nothing to do with "10x" - no matter the skill level
| you think you have, you'll be better off with a wide set of
| people who know you. "Know you" to any degree - often people will
| prefer you to going through the circus of interviewing for pretty
| random results.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Related classic about information asymmetry:
| https://danluu.com/hiring-lemons/
| jakub_g wrote:
| I started my first full time job out of college a bit over a
| decade ago, in an old-school boring EU "midtech" company.
|
| I didn't know this back then, but I was very lucky to have landed
| in a damn strong team.
|
| Fast-forward to today, most of the team members now work for
| FAANG and other bigtechs... except the guy who was IMO the best
| of all of us. Still same team, same company, no LinkedIn account
| etc.
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