5 ms·

No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. The sooner the tech industry realizes that

No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better off it'll be.

ralfn 9y ago
Are you absolutely sure you arent just convincing yourself? As someone who does actually love all this stuff so much that work doesnt start and hobby doesnt really stop... We meet and work with people like you all the time. We like the diversity. There are many ways to contribute to the end result and any smart company hires both of us. But your resentment is mean spirited. Get over yourself. We are not driving any one away. From operations to sales we are all needed to make the engine work. But if you come here arguing that those who love their job should be fired so there is place for you without you trying so hard, that just silly. Here is the thing: from all disciplines i know there are people who love and breathe their job. If thats not the case in engineering for you, then you likely want to find the field that does make you that happy. That might just be a smarter plan than trying to convince yourself by convincing us that in a field dominated by people who love it, you can be competitive while considering it just a safe career path. You'll just end up miserable.
- tptacek 9y ago
  Absolutely nobody has argued that people who code in their spare time should be fired. That's something you introduced, pointlessly and disruptively, to the thread. What a tire fire all these threads are. And people are surprised they get flagged!
  - jholman 9y ago
    I think that's very close to what gyardley argued. First paragraph is a claim that people who code in their spare time are liabilities rather than assets. Second paragraph is a claim that the tech industry as a whole should recognize this, and take steps to make sure there aren't too many around. That's not actually arguing for firing (I mean, it might be arguing for that, but not necessarily), but it's at a minimum arguing for actively choosing non-hobby-programmers over hobby-programmers for programming jobs. ralfn is not the one who turned this thread into a tire fire. If it is one, which I dispute, the culprits would be some combination of you and now me.
    - gyardley 9y ago
      'Coding in your spare time' isn't quite as extreme as having no life outside of tech. Hey, I code a bit in my spare time too, so let me clarify. It's the people who don't do anything else but code that I've, in my experience, had real issues with - they might make great computer scientists, but as a group they're not very good in a team of software developers. Arrogance, problems cooperating with others, excessive nitpicking, 'engineer's disease', poor social skills... I'm not saying you're guaranteed to have any or all of those problems if all you do 24/7 is code, but I've seen it one hell of a lot, and I'm perplexed why this type of person tends to be preferred over more well-rounded individuals. It's not like they're actually better at their jobs. I'm not arguing for going through an organization and sacking everyone who codes on the weekend. But I strongly suspect that if interviewers didn't glorify the obsessive 24/7 coder, either deliberately or subconsciously as 'what a real developer looks like', we'd have both a much more diverse tech industry and a much more functional one.
      - jholman 9y ago
        I attempted to make my previous comment neutral about the correctness of your claims; it was intended to be a refutation of tptacek's comment. And I apologize for oversimplifying your assertion to be about "coding in your spare time", which was inaccurate (although your original phrasing, "obsessive wretch", was sufficiently shitty that I thought I was doing you a favour by rephrasing, but I now agree that I didn't do the correct rephrasing). As for your claim itself, I think you have a good point, but you're a bit overextending its consequences, and ralfn's upthread response to you is right on. I think you're totally right that diversity of opinion and interest is a super useful supplementary skill. And I strongly agree that a team needs to have that diversity on the product side to product useful products. And I agree that a team somewhat benefits from having not just a few product specialists who have that diversity; it's essential to have a few, but it's also helpful to have lots of people with diverse perspectives. And sure, being extremely tech focused (being an "obsessive wretch") is obviously inimical to that diversity. And yeah, there's some unreasonable glorification going on. But I think there's also something reasonable about that glorification. Although deciding what to build is a huge part of the team's job, also building it is a huge part. Invariably the part that takes more person-hours, at least in a business large enough to have employees. And in my experience, the "obsessive wretches" actually do tend to be somewhat better at this part of the job. Not overwhelmingly better, but better. Not universally so, but as a tendency. That's just my observation from my medium-length career, and I accept your claim that you have different anecdata; if you have useful actual data I'm open to persuasion. Moreover, very frequently in this industry we hire people who frankly are not currently knowledgeable enough to do the job we're hiring for, but we hire them anyway because it often works out, and we don't want to pay the asking price of the people who already know how to do the job we're hiring for. Call it good (it allows new entrants), call it bad (lots of wheel-reinvention, ageism, etc), but I allege that it's very common. So, who's going to learn faster? My bet is on the monomaniac; maybe this is unfounded. So, I think this is a rational reason to prefer the obsessives. And I guess I should add that someone who has literally no other interests... okay, I'm with you. That person is likely to be a problem. But I will continue to favour people for whom outside study is one of their primary hobbies over people who do it a bit, and I'll continue to favour people who do it a bit over people who don't do it at all. And note that the example in TFA was not about someone with no other interests.... it was about one individual who did build a fibre-channel network over the weekend, and another individual who realized that they would never do so.
  - qb45 9y ago
    > flagged How is this not an abuse? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14873001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14873001
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Because "this thread is a shitshow" is actually a legitimate use of the flag button, and "this post says something I disagree with" isn't? The HN software has code that literally looks for threads like this and penalizes them.
      - qb45 9y ago
        They all are equal shitshows. This one even seems to have lower proportion of grey comments than the one I linked.
  - clarky07 9y ago
    Actually the parent pretty much said that exactly >No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. Translation - you are bad at your job >The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better off it'll be. reply Translation - we should get rid of these people who are not assets
  - sbierwagen 9y ago
    You've been practicing some serious selective reading in these threads. When it's the Enemy, you seem eager to read between the lines for dark intent, but when an Ally says something like "poor at building products", "this sort of person is not an asset" and "having too many of them around just drives others away" you demand a precise, literal reading that somehow doesn't conclude that this is a call to fire, or not hire, the type of person described.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Boothroid 9y ago
And there's nothing to stop them starting their own companies or being hired by companies that don't subscribe to the prevailing PC orthodoxy. And with their deep obsessiveness they may well write better software. Or are you saying they should not be allowed to? That's not how things work.
- gyardley 9y ago
  Of course I'm not saying 'they should not be allowed to'. I'm not quite sure how you'd get that. I'm saying that their deep obsessiveness, and issues relating to being deeply obsessed, makes their organization as a whole write worse software. They sometimes write good code on their own, especially if they don't have to work with others, but usually they're a net negative. Honestly, I don't know how this isn't obvious to anyone who's ever worked on a team.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. So they're possibly better at writing backend code. Let's make an effort to keep them employed by finding positions they can succeed in instead of purging people at the first sign of personality traits we don't like (that they may not have been able to control in the first place).
- malandrew 9y ago
  Amen. Linux and much of all the open source code in most language ecosystems that people rely on are usually written by such people. Purging them is akin to purging the giants whose shoulders many product engineers stand on.
brandonhsiao 9y ago
This is the sort of convenient take on things that incites immediate curiosity. Forced to its conclusion, you're arguing that people who code for fun in their spare time don't see any substantial increase in their chances of success as an engineer at all. Do you think that's true? I would agree with your original comment that you don't have to be obsessive, but without further substantial reasoning, xienze's position sounds like the more reasonable one here.
JohnTClark 9y ago
I hear this a lot about building products for others and that you need to have a divers team. 1. When you are building the back end of an online shop you don't care if that shop is for women's (makeup shop) or men (guns shop). When you build breaks for cars you don't care if the car is for women's or men. 2. You don't build a product base only on the experience of one person. You go and ask your target demographics what they want from your product. I am a man but I can't speak for all men.

ralfn 9y ago

Are you absolutely sure you arent just convincing yourself? As someone who does actually love all this stuff so much that work doesnt start and hobby doesnt really stop... We meet and work with people like you all the time. We like the diversity. There are many ways to contribute to the end result and any smart company hires both of us. But your resentment is mean spirited. Get over yourself. We are not driving any one away. From operations to sales we are all needed to make the engine work. But if you come here arguing that those who love their job should be fired so there is place for you without you trying so hard, that just silly. Here is the thing: from all disciplines i know there are people who love and breathe their job. If thats not the case in engineering for you, then you likely want to find the field that does make you that happy. That might just be a smarter plan than trying to convince yourself by convincing us that in a field dominated by people who love it, you can be competitive while considering it just a safe career path. You'll just end up miserable.

tptacek 9y ago
Absolutely nobody has argued that people who code in their spare time should be fired. That's something you introduced, pointlessly and disruptively, to the thread. What a tire fire all these threads are. And people are surprised they get flagged!
- jholman 9y ago
  I think that's very close to what gyardley argued. First paragraph is a claim that people who code in their spare time are liabilities rather than assets. Second paragraph is a claim that the tech industry as a whole should recognize this, and take steps to make sure there aren't too many around. That's not actually arguing for firing (I mean, it might be arguing for that, but not necessarily), but it's at a minimum arguing for actively choosing non-hobby-programmers over hobby-programmers for programming jobs. ralfn is not the one who turned this thread into a tire fire. If it is one, which I dispute, the culprits would be some combination of you and now me.
  - gyardley 9y ago
    'Coding in your spare time' isn't quite as extreme as having no life outside of tech. Hey, I code a bit in my spare time too, so let me clarify. It's the people who don't do anything else but code that I've, in my experience, had real issues with - they might make great computer scientists, but as a group they're not very good in a team of software developers. Arrogance, problems cooperating with others, excessive nitpicking, 'engineer's disease', poor social skills... I'm not saying you're guaranteed to have any or all of those problems if all you do 24/7 is code, but I've seen it one hell of a lot, and I'm perplexed why this type of person tends to be preferred over more well-rounded individuals. It's not like they're actually better at their jobs. I'm not arguing for going through an organization and sacking everyone who codes on the weekend. But I strongly suspect that if interviewers didn't glorify the obsessive 24/7 coder, either deliberately or subconsciously as 'what a real developer looks like', we'd have both a much more diverse tech industry and a much more functional one.
    - jholman 9y ago
      I attempted to make my previous comment neutral about the correctness of your claims; it was intended to be a refutation of tptacek's comment. And I apologize for oversimplifying your assertion to be about "coding in your spare time", which was inaccurate (although your original phrasing, "obsessive wretch", was sufficiently shitty that I thought I was doing you a favour by rephrasing, but I now agree that I didn't do the correct rephrasing). As for your claim itself, I think you have a good point, but you're a bit overextending its consequences, and ralfn's upthread response to you is right on. I think you're totally right that diversity of opinion and interest is a super useful supplementary skill. And I strongly agree that a team needs to have that diversity on the product side to product useful products. And I agree that a team somewhat benefits from having not just a few product specialists who have that diversity; it's essential to have a few, but it's also helpful to have lots of people with diverse perspectives. And sure, being extremely tech focused (being an "obsessive wretch") is obviously inimical to that diversity. And yeah, there's some unreasonable glorification going on. But I think there's also something reasonable about that glorification. Although deciding what to build is a huge part of the team's job, also building it is a huge part. Invariably the part that takes more person-hours, at least in a business large enough to have employees. And in my experience, the "obsessive wretches" actually do tend to be somewhat better at this part of the job. Not overwhelmingly better, but better. Not universally so, but as a tendency. That's just my observation from my medium-length career, and I accept your claim that you have different anecdata; if you have useful actual data I'm open to persuasion. Moreover, very frequently in this industry we hire people who frankly are not currently knowledgeable enough to do the job we're hiring for, but we hire them anyway because it often works out, and we don't want to pay the asking price of the people who already know how to do the job we're hiring for. Call it good (it allows new entrants), call it bad (lots of wheel-reinvention, ageism, etc), but I allege that it's very common. So, who's going to learn faster? My bet is on the monomaniac; maybe this is unfounded. So, I think this is a rational reason to prefer the obsessives. And I guess I should add that someone who has literally no other interests... okay, I'm with you. That person is likely to be a problem. But I will continue to favour people for whom outside study is one of their primary hobbies over people who do it a bit, and I'll continue to favour people who do it a bit over people who don't do it at all. And note that the example in TFA was not about someone with no other interests.... it was about one individual who did build a fibre-channel network over the weekend, and another individual who realized that they would never do so.
- qb45 9y ago
  > flagged How is this not an abuse? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14873001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14873001
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Because "this thread is a shitshow" is actually a legitimate use of the flag button, and "this post says something I disagree with" isn't? The HN software has code that literally looks for threads like this and penalizes them.
    - qb45 9y ago
      They all are equal shitshows. This one even seems to have lower proportion of grey comments than the one I linked.
- clarky07 9y ago
  Actually the parent pretty much said that exactly >No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. Translation - you are bad at your job >The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better off it'll be. reply Translation - we should get rid of these people who are not assets
- sbierwagen 9y ago
  You've been practicing some serious selective reading in these threads. When it's the Enemy, you seem eager to read between the lines for dark intent, but when an Ally says something like "poor at building products", "this sort of person is not an asset" and "having too many of them around just drives others away" you demand a precise, literal reading that somehow doesn't conclude that this is a call to fire, or not hire, the type of person described.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Boothroid 9y ago

And there's nothing to stop them starting their own companies or being hired by companies that don't subscribe to the prevailing PC orthodoxy. And with their deep obsessiveness they may well write better software. Or are you saying they should not be allowed to? That's not how things work.

gyardley 9y ago
Of course I'm not saying 'they should not be allowed to'. I'm not quite sure how you'd get that. I'm saying that their deep obsessiveness, and issues relating to being deeply obsessed, makes their organization as a whole write worse software. They sometimes write good code on their own, especially if they don't have to work with others, but usually they're a net negative. Honestly, I don't know how this isn't obvious to anyone who's ever worked on a team.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

>It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. So they're possibly better at writing backend code. Let's make an effort to keep them employed by finding positions they can succeed in instead of purging people at the first sign of personality traits we don't like (that they may not have been able to control in the first place).

malandrew 9y ago
Amen. Linux and much of all the open source code in most language ecosystems that people rely on are usually written by such people. Purging them is akin to purging the giants whose shoulders many product engineers stand on.

brandonhsiao 9y ago

This is the sort of convenient take on things that incites immediate curiosity. Forced to its conclusion, you're arguing that people who code for fun in their spare time don't see any substantial increase in their chances of success as an engineer at all. Do you think that's true? I would agree with your original comment that you don't have to be obsessive, but without further substantial reasoning, xienze's position sounds like the more reasonable one here.

JohnTClark 9y ago

I hear this a lot about building products for others and that you need to have a divers team. 1. When you are building the back end of an online shop you don't care if that shop is for women's (makeup shop) or men (guns shop). When you build breaks for cars you don't care if the car is for women's or men. 2. You don't build a product base only on the experience of one person. You go and ask your target demographics what they want from your product. I am a man but I can't speak for all men.