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The Rule of Awesome

26 points by RobSim 13y ago

alexpopescu 13y ago
Yeah, I'm pretty sure timely and imposed awesomeness is exactly what is needed.
kanja 13y ago
Last time I did something awesome I had 3 days left in my quota.
angrydev 13y ago
30 days to do something awesome, and then...?
- krapp 13y ago
  29, then 28, then 27... Until they're left with The Most Interesting Developer In The World.
ISL 13y ago
Awesome and relevance aren't always aligned. Some days, we do something awesome in the office (laser cut a table from aluminum sheet, or print hundreds of digits of \pi directly onto a storebought pie [0] for example), and everyone around says "Whoa! That's awesome!". At the end of the day, though, we're physicists, and we need to ship some physics out the door. [0] http://guavaduck.com/laser/ http://guavaduck.com/laser/
- guylhem 13y ago
  I disagree. Take a military analogy - if you're not doing something "shippable" (ex: fighting), you are training to maintain or raise your potential for when you will have to get in action - or at least to maintain discipline. I'm not into physics, but if I had to place my bets between a team of physicists who loves to redo the world with the help of beers during long lunch hours, and a team of physicist who is into laser cutting a table from an aluminum sheet, I'd place my bet on the latter. You may not be "shipping" physics at the moment, but you are maintaining your knowledge, training doing something that might seem pointless but will help you keep your skills or even develop new ones (ain't there a place for physics to decide how to best laser cut aluminum? Can you write an equation for the precise minimal laser power required to cut, depending on the metal and its depth?)
  - ISL 13y ago
    I agree. Play is incredibly important. I only wanted to point out that 'awesome' alone may be insufficient as a hiring criterion.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    Brilliant catch there. And adding in a quote I heard recently supposedly from a Navy SEAL Under pressure you don't rise to the occassion, you sink to the level of your training. As a rough rule bet on the girl with a large number of working github repos - she is used to shipping working code
- kaybe 13y ago
  And this physicist now thinks your lab is a pretty cool place to be. Is this really pointless?
jmorton 13y ago
"If we are hiring you because you are awesome, then you have 30 days to do something awesome" I'm curious about how much autonomy and latitude people need to do something that breaks the awesome threshold. It seems to me that the more guided or directed someone is, the less likely the work they do will be considered awesome. I tend to prefer more quantifiable terms. For example, having a clear million dollar improvement to the top or bottom line in one year. However, I very much agree that everyone should add something to the team. [edit, format quote]
gggggggg 13y ago
I might be wrong, but I would like to think everyone getting a new job has something in them to do something awesome. Well anyone with a decent amount of experience anyway. A fresh set of eyes and no history is all it takes a lot of the time. I am not sure this makes someone really awesome though.
- krapp 13y ago
  I agree with the sentiment but I think it's more the "fulfill this arbitrary metric in a month or you're fired" implied here: If we are hiring you because you are awesome, then you have 30 days to do something awesome. And awesome is simply defined as me (or your supervisor) thinking to him/herself, “man, that's awesome!” just once. that's putting people off.
coldtea 13y ago
>If we are hiring you because you are awesome, then you have 30 days to do something awesome. And awesome is simply defined as me (or your supervisor) thinking to him/herself, “man, that's awesome!” just once. "You have 30 days to do something awesome"? Really? Well, how about you stuffing your job offer you know where? Professionals, including trained Computer Science and IT professionals, demand professional respect. They are there to solve specific needs. In our case code quality code, iterate, engineer and polish programs to completion, ensure a solid architecture for your offering, and all that. Programming is not a parlor trick, and employees are not trained dogs to do back flips at will for your amusement. The sense of self-entitlement of those BS managers always amuses me. As if your shitty startup is the be all end all, and people should be grateful and "amaze you" for having given them work. Like some decadent Roman emperor towards his circus act: "amuse me or die". Not to mention that amazing some exec with something "awesome", as everybody has witnessed at some point, can be miles away from shipping solid code and solving the company's real problems keeping it from sinking.
- obviouslygreen 13y ago
  Mild overstatements aside, I completely agree with the sentiment here, and would have made almost exactly the same mild overstatements myself, had I thought of them first. :)
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Yes, there's a pretty fine intersection between stuff that is "awesome" and stuff that is actually hard, especially if you are pitching to non technical types. Carefully design a distributed system so that it handles all of the one-in-a-million concurrency edge cases correctly , logs exceptions properly and has proper tests and documentation; hard but not "awesome". Creating an HTML page and filling it up with jquery plugins , "totally rad dude!"
- nthj 13y ago
  Not to mention that my ability to do something awesome in the first 30 days is in no small part dependent upon how well designed your onboarding process is, your systems' level of documentation, and how much BS I have to put up with day to day, none of which are in my control. In other words, unless you're GitHub, there's no way for me to know before accepting the offer whether I would feasibly be able to ship something awesome in 3 days or 3 months.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Yeah, I am a bit worried by the 30 days thing too, but the idea I like - I would want myself to be doing something awesome every quarter say. Milestones matter
ageyfman 13y ago
Is fixing bugs awesome? Because a guy who can fix bugs for 30 days straight is the most valuable engineer in the building, but using this rubric, he'd be fired, because I don't think anyone considers fixing bugs awesome. I wouldn't want to work somewhere where everyone is rushing to impress the boss with "awesome" features, when the rest of the product isn't getting love.
- diwu1989 13y ago
  I fixed 100 bugs in a single milestone at my current job last year, it just took a lot of time, nothing that demanded too much brain power. It was still recognized as awesome because the average on the team was 30 or so.
  - ageyfman 13y ago
    That IS awesome. That's my point, if you don't get it, and awesome is really just the "sizzle", then you're losing out on really solid people who are more into quality than fashion.
diwu1989 13y ago
I think this standard is probably a lot easier to beat than people expect. From personal experience, my hypothesis is that in any organization, there are a handful of high impact but low cost improvements to make. These low-hanging fruits will not be blatantly obvious, and will not be discernible to someone who isn't "awesome" for whatever reason, e.g. lack of curiosity, incompetence, bad business sense, etc... In a startup with sufficient autonomy, it's probably even doable to make a lasting difference in the first week. This is probably also tied to the idea of a 10x engineer, because they can figure out the right problems to solve and use 100% of their time to provide 1000% value.
auggierose 13y ago
So, Marissa Mayer is past her 30 days. What has she done that is awesome?
CurtMonash 13y ago
It's a rare client with whom I spend more than 2 days a year. At my rates, if they didn't think I did awesome stuff, they surely wouldn't (re)hire me. If a sales guy can't set up a meeting with an awesome prospect his first week on the job (set it up, not necessarily get around to having it), chances are he's not a great sales guy. If a process-oriented manager can't find some stupid process and short-circuit it her first month on the job, what is she good for? This standard isn't as crazy as it first sounds. What worries me more is the pompous tone of the whole thing. ------------------------------------ Also, I'd hope that any organization that abides by this rule goes all-in on the Rule of Awesome, which in its original form is the a tabletop RPG principle to the effect of "Anything sufficiently awesome is automatically allowed." :) (Compare Rule of Funny, Rule of Cool.)
- MrQuincle 13y ago
  Perhaps you are not hired for awesome stuff, but just for your name, your connections, your looks...
  - CurtMonash 13y ago
    If I ever was hired for my looks, that was a long time in the past. My connections, however, are pretty awesome. :)
    - MrQuincle 13y ago
      Considering my connections I think I still have to rely on my looks. :-D
- kbenson 13y ago
  Isn't that just called doing your job? I imagine awesome to be more than expected.
nmcfarl 13y ago
So much is this depends on your "awesome" level. Personally I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything anyone on the planet has done this year that is awesome. Or at least that I've heard. A couple of my friends done "pretty excellent" things involving either cooking or overcoming fears in the last year but not a single thing in this past year has filled me with awe. Call me jaded...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- eCa 13y ago
  You don't need to be filled with awe, you only need some awe..
  - nmcfarl 13y ago
    Nice. But I've got none at all :)
MrQuincle 13y ago
Sure... one of my colleagues was doing something awesome according to my CEO, another not so much. The former was demonstrating open-source software build by others. The latter implemented lots of stuff adding intrinsic value to the community. Manager, if you require "awesome", you will get "awesome", but it will be tailored to you and won't surpass your intellect or vision.
brand0n_ 13y ago
Ugh... Why does every portfolio website use this identical layout? (the left nav, the random image header above it, etc). All people do is switch up the colors and put their own obscure image at the top. Lame.
- zachlatta 13y ago
  You might want to take a look at https://svbtle.com/ https://svbtle.com/

The Rule of Awesome

26 points by RobSim 13y ago

alexpopescu 13y ago

Yeah, I'm pretty sure timely and imposed awesomeness is exactly what is needed.

kanja 13y ago

Last time I did something awesome I had 3 days left in my quota.

angrydev 13y ago

30 days to do something awesome, and then...?

krapp 13y ago
29, then 28, then 27... Until they're left with The Most Interesting Developer In The World.

ISL 13y ago

Awesome and relevance aren't always aligned. Some days, we do something awesome in the office (laser cut a table from aluminum sheet, or print hundreds of digits of \pi directly onto a storebought pie [0] for example), and everyone around says "Whoa! That's awesome!". At the end of the day, though, we're physicists, and we need to ship some physics out the door. [0] http://guavaduck.com/laser/ http://guavaduck.com/laser/

guylhem 13y ago
I disagree. Take a military analogy - if you're not doing something "shippable" (ex: fighting), you are training to maintain or raise your potential for when you will have to get in action - or at least to maintain discipline. I'm not into physics, but if I had to place my bets between a team of physicists who loves to redo the world with the help of beers during long lunch hours, and a team of physicist who is into laser cutting a table from an aluminum sheet, I'd place my bet on the latter. You may not be "shipping" physics at the moment, but you are maintaining your knowledge, training doing something that might seem pointless but will help you keep your skills or even develop new ones (ain't there a place for physics to decide how to best laser cut aluminum? Can you write an equation for the precise minimal laser power required to cut, depending on the metal and its depth?)
- ISL 13y ago
  I agree. Play is incredibly important. I only wanted to point out that 'awesome' alone may be insufficient as a hiring criterion.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  Brilliant catch there. And adding in a quote I heard recently supposedly from a Navy SEAL Under pressure you don't rise to the occassion, you sink to the level of your training. As a rough rule bet on the girl with a large number of working github repos - she is used to shipping working code
kaybe 13y ago
And this physicist now thinks your lab is a pretty cool place to be. Is this really pointless?

jmorton 13y ago

"If we are hiring you because you are awesome, then you have 30 days to do something awesome" I'm curious about how much autonomy and latitude people need to do something that breaks the awesome threshold. It seems to me that the more guided or directed someone is, the less likely the work they do will be considered awesome. I tend to prefer more quantifiable terms. For example, having a clear million dollar improvement to the top or bottom line in one year. However, I very much agree that everyone should add something to the team. [edit, format quote]

gggggggg 13y ago

I might be wrong, but I would like to think everyone getting a new job has something in them to do something awesome. Well anyone with a decent amount of experience anyway. A fresh set of eyes and no history is all it takes a lot of the time. I am not sure this makes someone really awesome though.

krapp 13y ago
I agree with the sentiment but I think it's more the "fulfill this arbitrary metric in a month or you're fired" implied here: If we are hiring you because you are awesome, then you have 30 days to do something awesome. And awesome is simply defined as me (or your supervisor) thinking to him/herself, “man, that's awesome!” just once. that's putting people off.

coldtea 13y ago

>If we are hiring you because you are awesome, then you have 30 days to do something awesome. And awesome is simply defined as me (or your supervisor) thinking to him/herself, “man, that's awesome!” just once. "You have 30 days to do something awesome"? Really? Well, how about you stuffing your job offer you know where? Professionals, including trained Computer Science and IT professionals, demand professional respect. They are there to solve specific needs. In our case code quality code, iterate, engineer and polish programs to completion, ensure a solid architecture for your offering, and all that. Programming is not a parlor trick, and employees are not trained dogs to do back flips at will for your amusement. The sense of self-entitlement of those BS managers always amuses me. As if your shitty startup is the be all end all, and people should be grateful and "amaze you" for having given them work. Like some decadent Roman emperor towards his circus act: "amuse me or die". Not to mention that amazing some exec with something "awesome", as everybody has witnessed at some point, can be miles away from shipping solid code and solving the company's real problems keeping it from sinking.

obviouslygreen 13y ago
Mild overstatements aside, I completely agree with the sentiment here, and would have made almost exactly the same mild overstatements myself, had I thought of them first. :)
jiggy2011 13y ago
Yes, there's a pretty fine intersection between stuff that is "awesome" and stuff that is actually hard, especially if you are pitching to non technical types. Carefully design a distributed system so that it handles all of the one-in-a-million concurrency edge cases correctly , logs exceptions properly and has proper tests and documentation; hard but not "awesome". Creating an HTML page and filling it up with jquery plugins , "totally rad dude!"
nthj 13y ago
Not to mention that my ability to do something awesome in the first 30 days is in no small part dependent upon how well designed your onboarding process is, your systems' level of documentation, and how much BS I have to put up with day to day, none of which are in my control. In other words, unless you're GitHub, there's no way for me to know before accepting the offer whether I would feasibly be able to ship something awesome in 3 days or 3 months.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Yeah, I am a bit worried by the 30 days thing too, but the idea I like - I would want myself to be doing something awesome every quarter say. Milestones matter

ageyfman 13y ago

Is fixing bugs awesome? Because a guy who can fix bugs for 30 days straight is the most valuable engineer in the building, but using this rubric, he'd be fired, because I don't think anyone considers fixing bugs awesome. I wouldn't want to work somewhere where everyone is rushing to impress the boss with "awesome" features, when the rest of the product isn't getting love.

diwu1989 13y ago
I fixed 100 bugs in a single milestone at my current job last year, it just took a lot of time, nothing that demanded too much brain power. It was still recognized as awesome because the average on the team was 30 or so.
- ageyfman 13y ago
  That IS awesome. That's my point, if you don't get it, and awesome is really just the "sizzle", then you're losing out on really solid people who are more into quality than fashion.

diwu1989 13y ago

I think this standard is probably a lot easier to beat than people expect. From personal experience, my hypothesis is that in any organization, there are a handful of high impact but low cost improvements to make. These low-hanging fruits will not be blatantly obvious, and will not be discernible to someone who isn't "awesome" for whatever reason, e.g. lack of curiosity, incompetence, bad business sense, etc... In a startup with sufficient autonomy, it's probably even doable to make a lasting difference in the first week. This is probably also tied to the idea of a 10x engineer, because they can figure out the right problems to solve and use 100% of their time to provide 1000% value.

auggierose 13y ago

So, Marissa Mayer is past her 30 days. What has she done that is awesome?

CurtMonash 13y ago

It's a rare client with whom I spend more than 2 days a year. At my rates, if they didn't think I did awesome stuff, they surely wouldn't (re)hire me. If a sales guy can't set up a meeting with an awesome prospect his first week on the job (set it up, not necessarily get around to having it), chances are he's not a great sales guy. If a process-oriented manager can't find some stupid process and short-circuit it her first month on the job, what is she good for? This standard isn't as crazy as it first sounds. What worries me more is the pompous tone of the whole thing. ------------------------------------ Also, I'd hope that any organization that abides by this rule goes all-in on the Rule of Awesome, which in its original form is the a tabletop RPG principle to the effect of "Anything sufficiently awesome is automatically allowed." :) (Compare Rule of Funny, Rule of Cool.)

MrQuincle 13y ago
Perhaps you are not hired for awesome stuff, but just for your name, your connections, your looks...
- CurtMonash 13y ago
  If I ever was hired for my looks, that was a long time in the past. My connections, however, are pretty awesome. :)
  - MrQuincle 13y ago
    Considering my connections I think I still have to rely on my looks. :-D
kbenson 13y ago
Isn't that just called doing your job? I imagine awesome to be more than expected.

nmcfarl 13y ago

So much is this depends on your "awesome" level. Personally I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything anyone on the planet has done this year that is awesome. Or at least that I've heard. A couple of my friends done "pretty excellent" things involving either cooking or overcoming fears in the last year but not a single thing in this past year has filled me with awe. Call me jaded...

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
eCa 13y ago
You don't need to be filled with awe, you only need some awe..
- nmcfarl 13y ago
  Nice. But I've got none at all :)

MrQuincle 13y ago

Sure... one of my colleagues was doing something awesome according to my CEO, another not so much. The former was demonstrating open-source software build by others. The latter implemented lots of stuff adding intrinsic value to the community. Manager, if you require "awesome", you will get "awesome", but it will be tailored to you and won't surpass your intellect or vision.

brand0n_ 13y ago

Ugh... Why does every portfolio website use this identical layout? (the left nav, the random image header above it, etc). All people do is switch up the colors and put their own obscure image at the top. Lame.

zachlatta 13y ago
You might want to take a look at https://svbtle.com/ https://svbtle.com/