Technical talent and poor people skills often go hand in hand. I've seen too many expensive projects never come to fruition just because the only person on the team capable of getting things done ran out of the room screaming, after seeing the documentation requirements and the team meeting schedule. Aside from the issue of talented sociopaths, there is a much more troubling problem of socially well-adjusted morons who are exceptional freeloaders. Invariably, I prefer talented but maladjusted co-workers to sociable nincompoops. Of course, those who are talented and sociable are always better, but they make look bad:)
Interesting analogy but probably not applicable here. You see, Ed didn't just tell you how to build the train - he actually built it for you. True, the bastard hasn't produced a shred of documentation. And now, after Ed's unfortunate demise, you and your team of average engineers are scratching your heads, trying to figure out how to extend Ed's design to reach Tokyo. And the reason for your predicament is obvious: as an employer you lucked out to have a truly talented engineer working for you, but, being an idiot, you made no attempt to understand his work. You should have been searching high and low for engineers capable of understanding Ed's designs and working with him, however difficult that might have been. Instead, you hired some random guys off the street and let Ed work alone. Your problem is entirely your own fault.
Talented people get bored easily. Something that you or I may find intellectually stimulating, they find obvious and prosaic. This is why, as the fortunate employer of a genius, you hire capable people who complement his talents. You don't make soup out of your goose just because he won't document the process of laying golden eggs.
And this is clearly a problem not with your former programmer, but with how your department operates. You know, there is no rule that requires you to wait for your lead talent to quit before you can try to analyze his code. Maybe he would even tell what this "fn" argument is all about.
When the total cost of writing and maintaining "brilliant" code exceeds that of "average" code that provides adequate performance, then there's a problem.
And, by extension of your logic, if this brilliant code is more profitable to the company, then it is well worth the cost of hiring someone with adequate skills to untangle the spaghetti and with mental fortitude to work with the spaghetti's eccentric author. We are in agreement then.
Well, I never worked at a small company. My experience working with Josh-like characters comes entirely from working in very large companies. Thus, it would seem your big-fish-in-a-little-pond theory may be flawed. There is almost always somebody better somewhere out there, but that genius already works for your competition. Not to mention that their Josh is every bit as much of an eccentric a-hole as your Josh. The point is: this guy makes your company big money. Most managers would rather select a team that complements such talent, as opposed to getting rid of the talent and hiring more of the average coders with excellent documentation-writing skills.
Here is the simple truth about computer code: if it's fast and reliable, then it is not convoluted, even if nobody else in your development department can make heads and tails of it. You just need to hire coders with better qualifications. You have a real problem if one of your guys is so much better than the rest. And the problem is not that this guy is an eccentric genius, but that you've been hiring mostly idiots, who can't even understand code that has been already written. In a situation like this, the department head should do some serious soul searching and, perhaps, have a serious talk with the HR head.
It is equally amazing how programmers of average ability insist on branding brilliant code they have trouble understanding as convoluted and obscure. The only thing that matters here is the bottom line. If Josh produces code that makes the company millions, then this is all that matters. It is entirely irrelevant if some of Josh's obtuse co-workers with a pronounced inferiority complex think that his code is convoluted. Most managers I know would rather fire every idiot complaining about Josh's shenanigans, than to fire their obnoxious but talented cash cow.
I had the privilege of working with a couple guys like Josh. Understanding their work and their methods may be challenging, but it is also rewarding. Most can't stand brilliant co-workers, but not because of their alleged eccentricity. Bell curve riders feel inadequate and threatened working with talent. They demand endless meetings, ceaseless telecons, and detailed documentation, as if reading documentation would actually make them understand genius. People like Josh rarely get fired: they just get tired working every day with the same morons and go for a better-paying job elsewhere.
Enlightenment may be too broad of a concept. Generally, progress in science occurs when people stop taking their religion too seriously. God is bad for science. Science is a quest for knowledge and knowledge cannot be heretical, unethical, immoral, or illegal. Organized religion in general is the biggest enemy of scientific progress. Best scientific and technological progress is made when we lift restrictions imposed by religion, law and morality.
You are both right and wrong. Creating intentionally convoluted processes to maintain demand for your "expertise" is - and I agree with you here - not a good way to keep your job. However, any process, system, or program has flaws that are unavoidable due to its concept, design, implementation or application. Some of these flaws manifest themselves as frequent and annoying but easy-to-fix problem; while others come out rarely but cause serious disruptions and are extremely difficult to troubleshoot, requiring deep understanding of the underlying system.
You can document the steps for fixing simple problems and anybody with nominal technical skills will be able to deal with these problems on a day-to-day basis. But this harmless information sharing may put your job at risk because your boss lacks technical skills to understand the difference between simple problems and complicated, systemic issues. You boss - and this happens all too often - may get an idea that the new guy he just hired is capable of doing your job just as well as you do it. You get an ax and a few months later the system goes down, the new guy can't fix it, and everybody gets screwed. While knowing something like this happened may be good for your ego, you are still out of the job.
Rule number one: do not document simple things. There is no reason to tempt your boss. Rule number two: do not write documentation that any idiot can follow. Such documentation would have to be so detailed that it would have very limited scope of application and, therefore, be useless in most situations. Rule number three: create documentation that you or someone with your level of expertise will be able to follow. But don't overdo it. It's good documentation of you yourself can follow it. Anything beyond this is compromising your job security and generally making your job more difficult.
With shrinking economy, your talent-skill-experience approach is not just useless but harmful as well. If for every 10 positions you have 100 applicants, then at best only 10% will find jobs. And these 10% of applicants will be selected based mostly on a subjective (an in many cases dilettante, managerial) understanding of what these qualities are, how they should be evaluated, and what value they bring to the employer.
Working for a very large company for many years I noticed one thing about big layoffs: your professional qualities, your talent-skill-experience do not guarantee you continued employment. There are just too many other factors guiding the flow of pink slips. Lets just put it this way: people who make these decision are rarely in a position to fully understand talent, skill and experience. Usually they are guided by personal opinions, gut feelings and, sometimes, rubber-stamp performance evaluations.
It seems./ is getting dumber by the day. Here's an article about a new operating system and all people talk about is copyright. So if the retards are reading/., who is reading the PC Magazine?
This is a Republican fairy tale that the housing bubble was caused by low-income buyers getting into subprime mortgages they could not afford. Bullshit. The crisis is the immediate result of frenzy feeding around unrealistic housing prices driven up by people with good incomes getting into too many prime mortgages, trying to make a buck on the side. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we realize that greed and free entrepreneurial spirit doesn't just drive the economy but sometimes also drives it into the ground. Don't worry: giving $2500 to poor folks to help them buy a fuel-efficient car will not break the United States.
I don't know what fabulously wealthy part of America you hail from, but for most of us not just twelve grand, but even measly $2500 is still real money. Besides, only an idiot would make a $12,000 down payment on a car with his hard-earned cash, when he can get into the same car for a $2500 down payment he received from the government for his beater. In time when economy is unstable and the value of the dollar is dropping, having real money in the bank is preferable to paying off debts. But then again, if you weren't a dumbass, you would have realized that most folks out there driving piece-of-shit cars don't have $12,000 sitting in their bank accounts. You are definitely not my uncle. My uncle is way smarter than you.
Let me explain the complex logic behind this proposal. Let's imagine you have a piece-of-shit car. You would like to buy a new one. You have a job, so you can afford to make car loan payments within reason. Your credit rating is not stellar, but you will still qualify for decent terms on your loan. But you need two things: a down payment (for better loan rate and various fees due at signing) and a kick in the butt to finally get rid of your rust bucket. And here comes the solution in the form of $2,500 for your worthless vehicle. Still too complicated?
You can get Verizon Business FiOS without having to sign up for either TV or phone service. They charged me $30 installation and $100/mo for 20 mbps down/5 mbps up service. This includes one static IP. Their 20/20 option costs $140/mo and includes, I believe, three static IPs.
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Technical talent and poor people skills often go hand in hand. I've seen too many expensive projects never come to fruition just because the only person on the team capable of getting things done ran out of the room screaming, after seeing the documentation requirements and the team meeting schedule. Aside from the issue of talented sociopaths, there is a much more troubling problem of socially well-adjusted morons who are exceptional freeloaders. Invariably, I prefer talented but maladjusted co-workers to sociable nincompoops. Of course, those who are talented and sociable are always better, but they make look bad :)
Interesting analogy but probably not applicable here. You see, Ed didn't just tell you how to build the train - he actually built it for you. True, the bastard hasn't produced a shred of documentation. And now, after Ed's unfortunate demise, you and your team of average engineers are scratching your heads, trying to figure out how to extend Ed's design to reach Tokyo. And the reason for your predicament is obvious: as an employer you lucked out to have a truly talented engineer working for you, but, being an idiot, you made no attempt to understand his work. You should have been searching high and low for engineers capable of understanding Ed's designs and working with him, however difficult that might have been. Instead, you hired some random guys off the street and let Ed work alone. Your problem is entirely your own fault.
Talented people get bored easily. Something that you or I may find intellectually stimulating, they find obvious and prosaic. This is why, as the fortunate employer of a genius, you hire capable people who complement his talents. You don't make soup out of your goose just because he won't document the process of laying golden eggs.
And this is clearly a problem not with your former programmer, but with how your department operates. You know, there is no rule that requires you to wait for your lead talent to quit before you can try to analyze his code. Maybe he would even tell what this "fn" argument is all about.
When the total cost of writing and maintaining "brilliant" code exceeds that of "average" code that provides adequate performance, then there's a problem.
And, by extension of your logic, if this brilliant code is more profitable to the company, then it is well worth the cost of hiring someone with adequate skills to untangle the spaghetti and with mental fortitude to work with the spaghetti's eccentric author. We are in agreement then.
Well, I never worked at a small company. My experience working with Josh-like characters comes entirely from working in very large companies. Thus, it would seem your big-fish-in-a-little-pond theory may be flawed. There is almost always somebody better somewhere out there, but that genius already works for your competition. Not to mention that their Josh is every bit as much of an eccentric a-hole as your Josh. The point is: this guy makes your company big money. Most managers would rather select a team that complements such talent, as opposed to getting rid of the talent and hiring more of the average coders with excellent documentation-writing skills. Here is the simple truth about computer code: if it's fast and reliable, then it is not convoluted, even if nobody else in your development department can make heads and tails of it. You just need to hire coders with better qualifications. You have a real problem if one of your guys is so much better than the rest. And the problem is not that this guy is an eccentric genius, but that you've been hiring mostly idiots, who can't even understand code that has been already written. In a situation like this, the department head should do some serious soul searching and, perhaps, have a serious talk with the HR head.
It is equally amazing how programmers of average ability insist on branding brilliant code they have trouble understanding as convoluted and obscure. The only thing that matters here is the bottom line. If Josh produces code that makes the company millions, then this is all that matters. It is entirely irrelevant if some of Josh's obtuse co-workers with a pronounced inferiority complex think that his code is convoluted. Most managers I know would rather fire every idiot complaining about Josh's shenanigans, than to fire their obnoxious but talented cash cow. I had the privilege of working with a couple guys like Josh. Understanding their work and their methods may be challenging, but it is also rewarding. Most can't stand brilliant co-workers, but not because of their alleged eccentricity. Bell curve riders feel inadequate and threatened working with talent. They demand endless meetings, ceaseless telecons, and detailed documentation, as if reading documentation would actually make them understand genius. People like Josh rarely get fired: they just get tired working every day with the same morons and go for a better-paying job elsewhere.
Flawed analogy. This is exactly why they serve summons to you personally and not just drop them off in your mailbox.
Enlightenment may be too broad of a concept. Generally, progress in science occurs when people stop taking their religion too seriously. God is bad for science. Science is a quest for knowledge and knowledge cannot be heretical, unethical, immoral, or illegal. Organized religion in general is the biggest enemy of scientific progress. Best scientific and technological progress is made when we lift restrictions imposed by religion, law and morality.
I followed it and it was fun! Thanks!
You are both right and wrong. Creating intentionally convoluted processes to maintain demand for your "expertise" is - and I agree with you here - not a good way to keep your job. However, any process, system, or program has flaws that are unavoidable due to its concept, design, implementation or application. Some of these flaws manifest themselves as frequent and annoying but easy-to-fix problem; while others come out rarely but cause serious disruptions and are extremely difficult to troubleshoot, requiring deep understanding of the underlying system.
You can document the steps for fixing simple problems and anybody with nominal technical skills will be able to deal with these problems on a day-to-day basis. But this harmless information sharing may put your job at risk because your boss lacks technical skills to understand the difference between simple problems and complicated, systemic issues. You boss - and this happens all too often - may get an idea that the new guy he just hired is capable of doing your job just as well as you do it. You get an ax and a few months later the system goes down, the new guy can't fix it, and everybody gets screwed. While knowing something like this happened may be good for your ego, you are still out of the job.
Rule number one: do not document simple things. There is no reason to tempt your boss. Rule number two: do not write documentation that any idiot can follow. Such documentation would have to be so detailed that it would have very limited scope of application and, therefore, be useless in most situations. Rule number three: create documentation that you or someone with your level of expertise will be able to follow. But don't overdo it. It's good documentation of you yourself can follow it. Anything beyond this is compromising your job security and generally making your job more difficult.
Dude, where's my space station?
With shrinking economy, your talent-skill-experience approach is not just useless but harmful as well. If for every 10 positions you have 100 applicants, then at best only 10% will find jobs. And these 10% of applicants will be selected based mostly on a subjective (an in many cases dilettante, managerial) understanding of what these qualities are, how they should be evaluated, and what value they bring to the employer. Working for a very large company for many years I noticed one thing about big layoffs: your professional qualities, your talent-skill-experience do not guarantee you continued employment. There are just too many other factors guiding the flow of pink slips. Lets just put it this way: people who make these decision are rarely in a position to fully understand talent, skill and experience. Usually they are guided by personal opinions, gut feelings and, sometimes, rubber-stamp performance evaluations.
What boom? Are you drunk?
It doesn't require any input from the user. In fact, no users are required.
It seems ./ is getting dumber by the day. Here's an article about a new operating system and all people talk about is copyright. So if the retards are reading /., who is reading the PC Magazine?
If by "international community" you mean the RIAA or the US in general, then I think it is time someone changed the rules a bit.
The system operates itself. That's why we call it the operating system.
This is a Republican fairy tale that the housing bubble was caused by low-income buyers getting into subprime mortgages they could not afford. Bullshit. The crisis is the immediate result of frenzy feeding around unrealistic housing prices driven up by people with good incomes getting into too many prime mortgages, trying to make a buck on the side. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we realize that greed and free entrepreneurial spirit doesn't just drive the economy but sometimes also drives it into the ground. Don't worry: giving $2500 to poor folks to help them buy a fuel-efficient car will not break the United States.
I don't know what fabulously wealthy part of America you hail from, but for most of us not just twelve grand, but even measly $2500 is still real money. Besides, only an idiot would make a $12,000 down payment on a car with his hard-earned cash, when he can get into the same car for a $2500 down payment he received from the government for his beater. In time when economy is unstable and the value of the dollar is dropping, having real money in the bank is preferable to paying off debts. But then again, if you weren't a dumbass, you would have realized that most folks out there driving piece-of-shit cars don't have $12,000 sitting in their bank accounts. You are definitely not my uncle. My uncle is way smarter than you.
Let me explain the complex logic behind this proposal. Let's imagine you have a piece-of-shit car. You would like to buy a new one. You have a job, so you can afford to make car loan payments within reason. Your credit rating is not stellar, but you will still qualify for decent terms on your loan. But you need two things: a down payment (for better loan rate and various fees due at signing) and a kick in the butt to finally get rid of your rust bucket. And here comes the solution in the form of $2,500 for your worthless vehicle. Still too complicated?
Buy a gun. Kill yourself.
You can get Verizon Business FiOS without having to sign up for either TV or phone service. They charged me $30 installation and $100/mo for 20 mbps down/5 mbps up service. This includes one static IP. Their 20/20 option costs $140/mo and includes, I believe, three static IPs.
Should I mop the floor and clean the bathroom or hire a lawyer? Hmm... I'll hire a lawyer.
Wouldn't this make it a warmhole?
Your job will be outsourced to your computer. You will be fired.