Hacker News Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12603303
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12603303
#hackernews
- Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠) repeated this.
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@hackernews Many good answers on this one.
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@clacke I'm dealing with that same question now while interviewing candidates at work. IMO, it's all relative to the amount of value the candidate adds to the team. That doesn't just mean technical skill; yes, I'd expect a "senior" programmer to be able to write decent code that meets requirements without much supervision, but I'd also expect that person to be able to follow standards; work well within the team; advance the team and the development process; be able to convey knowledge and criticism effectively to others; accept (and act upon) criticism; write code that is easily maintained by any person on the team (present and future); understand when and how to abstract, and use those principles effectively while keeping the system as _simple_ as possible; be fundamentally interested in their work (ideally have related interests outside of work); recognize when to do research to improve both his/her knowledge and that of the team; constantly work to improve systems and procedures rather than sticking with the status quo; understand both the "how" and the "why" (e.g. theory) of these concepts; _not_ push their own agenda and style without consulting the team; etc.
It's easy to be a hacker. It's all the other stuff that's hard and takes both wisdom and experience.
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@mikegerwitz All good points. Except that *sometimes* pushing your own agenda is The Right Thing. It all comes down to that wisdom again. :)
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@mikegerwitz @clacke For some reason this makes me think of this classic quote: http://qttr.at/1hwn
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@blp @mikegerwitz I have that quote in mind quite frequently. Last time was just the other day, can't remember the context.
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@blp @mikegerwitz He didn't say it as himself. The proper quotation is:
Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" (1973), Robert A. Heinlein
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@blp @mikegerwitz It's pretty clear that he meant it as himself as well, though. :-)
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@clacke Oh, I've pushed what I consider to be The Right Thing many times. :) But if the team as a whole has a problem with it, then it's up to me to convince them, compromise, or move onto something else.