[The] main problem here is that software development is not an individual sport. Assessing technical traits means that we are looking at candidates as individuals. At the same time, we will put them in a team context and the project's success will depend on their teamwork. A person's resume or LinkedIn profile says close to nothing about their team skills.
What's more, we know quite a lot about what makes teams effective. Anita Woolley's research on collective intelligence [DOI: 10.1126/science.1193147] [DX] provides extremely valuable insight on the topic. First of all, how do we define collective intelligence? It's basically the skill of a group to solve complex problems. Well, it sounds like the definition of everyday work for software development teams if you ask me.
Why is collective intelligence so important? Exploiting collective intelligence, as opposed to going with the opinion of the smartest person in a room, is a winning strategy. To put in Anita Woolley's words: "Collective intelligence was much more predictive in terms of succeeding in complex tasks than average individual intelligence or maximal individual intelligence."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:56PM (3 children)
with all the rent-duh-k0d3rz out there, how is this even a thing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:47PM (2 children)
The problem starts when you add a Coding Prima Donna to a smoothly functioning team. The Poison Apple then kills off what has been achieved by bullying techniques, while not delivering any visible value. Corridor criticism of some systems, backstabbing, etc. Been there, got burned. And then you do get the outside contractor who actually delivers perfectly working code by the ream and is open to expanding the team's knowledge. Character counts.
Your ace from Rent-a-K0derZ got their 'degree' from a Degree Mill and until last week was still working for "Microsoft Support"...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHTg5zzFEKE [youtube.com] - Marketplace expose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow8O-zXif0w [youtube.com] - buy degrees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yddpmhbUTic [youtube.com] - buy degrees too
That said, many accredited US colleges have been little more than Java mills since the mid-90's.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @11:56AM (1 child)
This.
Reminds me of a comment here on an article about a new programming language. It was a sort of nervous "Why don't people stick to industry standards like C++ and Java!". Goes to show you how fragile the technical abilities of some people can be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @03:52PM
C++? Java? Why don't people stick to industry standards like FORTRAN 77 and K&R C?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:57PM (26 children)
"the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group."
And this is how America got to the moon.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:08PM (7 children)
I didn't find the words female, woman, or women in TFA. However, I feel your sentiment. Counting wombs (on the assumption that all those assigned to the female gender at birth have the basic capability to grow a child in their bodies, which is not the case) as a metric of how good the team is may very likely be where TFA wants to nudge us.
I think what TFA misses is that the people on the team also need to know what the hell they're doing, or, at the very least, need to respect the experience of the people on the team who do know what the hell they're doing.
The Misogynerd Narrative is deleterious to the functioning of a healthy team. It creates the suspicion that people on the team with experience, if they were assigned the male gender at birth, do not actually have experience that contributes to skill. Instead, the Misogynerd Narrative tells us that the only experience assigned males in programming careers have is in keeping the secret voodoo away from cisfemales because they cannot get a laid and are all-around poopy-heads with no talent.
The Misogynerd Narrative destroys the value of experience that those who have it could contribute to the team. Instead, it tells the rest of the team that when they do not immediately understand the full details of what somebody with experience is proposing, that instead of asking questions and attempting to improve their own understanding and skills, they may easily conclude that the person with experience is intentionally making things “too technical” (a favorite explanation of the feminists at work for why they are unable to program at all when I make it look “so easy”) for the sole purpose of keeping women in their “place.”
I don't know what “place” I'm supposed to believe women “should” have, because the whole gender caste system thing makes no goddess-damned sense to me, but the effect is to prevent women from coming to the realization that not only is there a lot to learn if they truly want to be programmers, but that they can be programmers with dedication and persistent effort.
(This next rambling part about Wonder Woman will come around to a point!)
Where are the healthy Amazon values when it comes to cisfemale programmers?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:35PM
It's in the "Anita Woolley's research" link.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:58PM (5 children)
"the whole gender caste system"
I don't know what you mean by that, but it puts me in mind of what happens when you walk into a wall while aroused. Shudder.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:35PM (4 children)
If you're assigned the male gender at birth, regardless of your body parts, you're expected to do certain things, such as making oneself available for the military defense of one's country, making oneself economically profitable, and directly contributing with your personal wallet to the marriage/child support/alimony system that basically amounts of cisfemale-only basic income, as opposed to universal basic income.
If you're assigned the female gender at birth, regardless of your body parts, you're expected to do certain things, such as providing babysitting services and giving birth to at least two children (and I cannot emphasize enough that this is a requirement that old women themselves have for young women). Financial compensation is provided by society for each child one delivers to that point that it is possible to receive enough welfare that obtaining employment is a proposition that makes no financial sense (one will be worse off with than job than without, because of how our brain-dead welfare system works).
(Beware the mythical welfare queen. I'm not talking about those. I do not envy women who, for reasons I cannot comprehend, have decided to make themselves into full-time baby machines. I prefer the more traditional route of marrying a man [already have one picked out if only magic would start existing] before having children.)
That's the idea that I'm attempting to capture. I feel that feminism has already been down this road, and they called it the “gender dichotomy,” but then feminism went senile and was taken over gender essentialists who worship the gender dichotomy as The Way The Sky Fairy Meant Things To Be.
A caste system is by its nature artificial. Feminism forgot that there is a component of gender that is socially constructed. The social construction is the caste system. Unfortunately, feminism decided that it was more interested in enforcing the caste system rather than trying to work towards equality without a caste system where people may be individuals who are accountable for and only accountable for their own actions.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:00PM (1 child)
Stop with this bullshit. Nobody is "assigned to the male gender." They are observed to be male or female because of their body parts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:12PM
They are perceived to be male or female, sometimes mistakenly, on the basis of their body parts. When those parts don't meet a doctor's expectations, surgery is sometimes done:
(Wikipedia [wikipedia.org])
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 25 2017, @12:47PM
Maybe that's what makes them feel fulfilled. Who are you to say they're not? If most women want to have kids, it's probably because it's a biological imperative, the same way it is for men.
So, you're not that way. You don't have oxytocin coursing through your veins. That's fine. Having children is not a biological imperative for you. But using that as a lens to cast the biological reality for most humans as a "caste system" is gratuitous.
If you're living in a 1950's social reality that makes you feel oppressed, then change your venue to a place where nobody cares. You know the usual places: New York, San Francisco, Portland, OR, Seattle, etc. Avoid the Midwest and the South. Find others like you and form community with them. If the larger culture makes you feel oppressed, stop watching TV and reading magazines and generally participating in it. With the online universe you can hide in the long tail and switch off everything else.
I don't like spectator sports, so I don't watch them. I hate commercial culture so I cut the cord on cable years ago. I stopped giving all those things and all those people my life energy by hating them. Now life is calmer and better.
You can do the same. You put so much energy into hating a reality that you're not gonna change, ever. No matter what you do, no matter how many pejorative terms you lace your speech with, the vast, vast majority of men and women are going to continue to refer to themselves as men and women and have babies with each other. So instead of tearing yourself to pieces over it, find a way to live happily by surrounding yourself with neighbors, friends, and loved ones who accept you for who you are. You've got a lot more to offer the world than a seething cup of resentment.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 25 2017, @12:50PM
Feminism was very enthused to achieve equality, without losing the existing benefits. As soon as the existing benefits started to become threatened, feminism seemed to lose interest in equality.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:09PM (16 children)
Why yes, it is part of how America got to the moon.
1. Social sensitivity of group members is critical to group cohesiveness. In order for NASA's crews both in space and on the ground to be successful, they needed to be able to completely trust each other. For an example of how critical that is, when Neil Armstrong was landing the Eagle, he did something absolutely nuts, which was turning off the computer - had Buzz Aldrin not had the kind of relationship with Neil to trust him with his life, he might have tried to stop Neil from doing that.
2. NASA had and still has formal protocols about who speaks when, especially during time-sensitive decision-making moments. They have those protocols precisely so that they ensure that those making decisions aren't missing critically important information because the person with that information was being talked over.
3. As for women, they did a bunch of the critical work for NASA back in the day, in particular doing most of the mathematical computations. They were more trusted to do the math than the finicky electronic computers they had at their disposal. For instance, John Glenn famously demanded that Katherine Johnson [nasa.gov] recheck the computers' math before his orbital flight. By the late 1960's, you had women working as rocket scientists (e.g. Yvonne Brill), and in 1978 Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan were allowed to start their astronaut training and went into space a few years later.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:30PM (9 children)
In general agree. NASA is a good example. When doing things that are truly dangerous, the gender caste system finds the limit of its usefulness (assuming it has any).
This is my daily experience with womyn-born-womyn. I'm constantly being interrupted and talked over. It's gotten to the point where I've learned to just shut up when I'm not able to complete a single thought in a discussion dominated by womyn-born-womyn and just abandon the point entirely. Of course, had they not interrupted me and talked over me, so many times it would have saved them problems down the line, problems that these selfsame womyn-born-womyn have the audacity to try to hold me accountable for despite the way they systematically silenced and excluded me.
But hey. My experience obviously doesn't count because I was assigned the male gender at birth.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:49PM (1 child)
Great. Stop taking it out on the rest of us.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:18PM
No.
When feminism wants to get serious about gender equality, especially the part where you give up privileges you're used to being unaware you have, such as the privilege of being unaccountable for one's personal failures, then I will consider it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:56PM (5 children)
So, what you're saying is, you've become a man.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:13PM (4 children)
I would if I could. However, I have learned quite a bit from men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @08:11AM (3 children)
Kurenai... even though a lot of Helen Reddy types sing otherwise, we still have a helluva lot of expectations placed on us according to our gender. I am of the belief that I play the cards I am dealt. There are some good things about being female, along with some bad. Same with being male.
I see females being put up on pedestals, where apparently they can do no wrong. A man and a woman get in a fight, unless the guy has a lot of witnesses, its the guy who is probably going to cool off in the jail. Even if the woman is pushing his hot buttons. I have watched several of my friends who fell into marriage fall back out, with disastrous setbacks to his finances. While the woman ended up with the house.
The welfare systems around here will take care of a homeless woman, but a man is on his own. People come burn his tent down when he leaves to get something to eat. He stops to take a crap and other men steal his bike. Men have always been expected to settle their differences physically. Look at the old westerns - see many women having bar fights and gunplay in the streets? Nah, its nearly always the men brawling and its hard to put them up in a decent place... many act like hoodlums and tear the place up.
Now, the women seem by and large to think things out a bit more. Men seem way too gullible to be manipulated. Especially by women. It seems its in our nature to have to compete with each other to be accepted by a woman. We will often go into dire financial disarray just to present a transient illusion of our ability to provide to a woman. I do not know why we do it, but most of us do.
Admittedly, I am still single, as I did not play this game. I have had women play me before, and get me into fights, and bad financial moves to "prove" my love. Well, she was of the belief that I was supposed to buy her trinkets and fun times. I was of the belief that I needed to go through life with a help-mate, not a parasite. We did not see eye to eye, so I just left it at that.
Someone else can have the little princess, along with the upkeep to keep her satisfied. I figured having her was like having a fancy sports car that I could not afford neither the special gasoline nor the parts for. While not as satisfying, I can get porn-assisted biological relief. And its a lot less expensive to hire out the things she could have helped me with with others that specialize in those kind of things.
For me, its not at all like the relationship Dad had with Mom. It worked for over 50 years with Dad and Mom, but neither of them had today's expectations of what a relationship should be. They both had role models. Like "Leave It to Beaver". Dad did guy things. Mom did lady things. And we kids did chores. The family was a lot like watching a machine run.... everything had its purpose, and when it failed to work, it made it hard on everyone. I could not take the post "Helen Reddy" woman - not as a wife anyway. Between Women's Liberation and Walt Disney, I figured my generation was all Princesses. Not fit for anything but endless adoration by doting men all competing for a touch of her magic wand. I have enough problems of my own, trying to keep my bills paid. I simply did not need this.
I will have duck out as an anonymous coward, as I dared say things directly as I saw them, and most are not politically correct.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 25 2017, @12:57PM (2 children)
You're looking in the wrong places, at the wrong women. If you desire cheerleaders, you're gonna find they have cheerleader expectations. You're generally not going to find a cheerleader who, unexpectedly, loves abstract art.
First, figure out who you are and what values are important to you. Then, go to places where those things are practiced and celebrated. For example, if you're a Christian and that's important to you, then you should be looking for dates through church. If you love nature and outdoors activities, look for dates on Sierra Club hikes or trail runner clubs and the like. If you like art, take a sculpture/painting/whatever class. Women who share your specific interests are apt to share other interests with you, and having that in common is a natural ice-breaker.
But you gotta go looking. The perfect mate for you is not going to wander into your living room while you're playing Halo and demand you sweep her off her feet.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday September 25 2017, @09:53PM (1 child)
For example, if you're a Christian and that's important to you, then you should be looking for dates through church.
I'm not religious, but to add to this, what I've heard from several Christians is that the single female to single male ratio in Christian churches is absurdly high. So if you're a conservative Christian, you really should be having an easy time finding dates at church; if you've exhausted your options at your current church, try a different one. Conversely, though, life is pretty hard for single Christian females, or so I'm told, and also it's a disadvantage for non-religious men because women are, on average, much more religious than men, so if you want to date, you either have to give in and date a religious woman (who'll likely be much more conservative than you, which means your sex life will probably suck), or hold out for one of the non-religious women which are in short supply, then try to weed out the overly materialistic ("high maintenance") ones that are very common, or others who have various unstated expectations about your role as man in the relationship.
Honestly, I can see why more and more people are simply opting out of marriage and long-term cohabiting relationships. It's hard to find someone really compatible, and they don't really live up to their promises. Some minority of people get really lucky and find someone that really works as a partner to them, but they're the lucky few.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 26 2017, @10:12AM
Again, the hunting grounds you choose matter. If you're in the South, what you're saying holds absolutely true. The Midwest a little less so. In the West and Northeast, you'll do fine. As a bonus, in the West and Northeast there are far more hippie/granola girls who are quite keen on sex.
If that's true, it's sad. Having someone to share your life with is a blessing. Having someone to have a family with adds a whole other dimension of joy and meaning. Also, and most people don't talk about this, the sex is much better because of the unparalleled level of intimacy, emotional connection, and trust.
Nothing magically happens, though. You have to seek that kind of relationship. If you find a person, you then have to work at it because everyone has their foibles, including you. It takes time (and yes, sometimes fights) to reach detente. It's worth the effort, though. Dying alone sucks.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 25 2017, @06:07AM
That "womyn" shit does get annoying. Why don't you learn English, like most of the rest of us? Or, learn Greek, like Aristarchus. Then, you could use an archaic language and alphabet that all the rest of us would just ignore.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by unauthorized on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:44PM (2 children)
No, it's not. Many animal species can work like clockwork together, despite having a lot less "social sensitivity" than primates. Likewise, some of the most efficient social groups in the world are military organizations where social sensitivity is intentionally beaten out of the grunts.
Yes, but those women were actually good at what they were doing. Pointing out people of great expertise as a proof that you should prefer "social cohesion" over expertise is, to use the technical term, fucking stupid.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)
We're humans, not ants. We don't behave like ants. If we're going to do something, we need to figure out how humans can do it, and how the ants manage to pull off the same thing is immaterial. And that means paying attention to experts who might know a thing or two about how people respond to each other when stuck in a confined space with 5 other people for months on end.
I'm guessing you've never been in a military, because according to everyone I know who has they are decidedly not efficient at just about every activity except killing the enemy. This is in part because any mistake is magnified by a bunch of grunts who've been taught not to question orders. That said, militaries work extremely hard at trying to instill what they call "unit cohesion". And any detailed understanding of military history will actually show the touchy-feely stuff can make a real difference - e.g. the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade was ordered in part because the guy ordering the Light Brigade to charge hated the commander of the Light Brigade and was probably hoping he'd get killed.
And I never said "hire women who don't know what they're doing". Which I believe they should continue to do. I was responding to the claim that NASA succeeded because they were a sausage-fest, when in fact they have relied on talented women throughout their entire history.
Obviously, the ideal to strive for is people who are extremely capable and work well with others. I can tell you that whenever I've been involved in hiring people, once I knew the person across the table was capable of doing the job, I prized "not a jerk" over "extremely capable". A moderately capable non-jerk might not get as much done as an extremely capable jerk individually, but the extremely capable jerk will screw up the work of everybody else on the team and cause the overall results to get worse.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @05:01PM
Uhh... no. It may be that "touchy-feely" stuff makes a difference (and intuitively it must). However, you have failed to demonstrate it, let alone prove it, with your example.
The Charge of the Light Brigade [wikipedia.org] disaster happened due to a "miscommunication in the chain of command, [and as a result] the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery..."
Can more "touchy-feely" stuff stop all miscommunications? I doubt it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:45PM
is vomit-inducing. The mere mention of that term is frankly an abomination. I care more about what someone can actually do. If they've proven themselves to be able to do something, then I can at least trust them with that, 'social sensitivity' or not.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:51PM (1 child)
I thought we used Nazis.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @03:56PM
That's another part. That's what "part" means: There's more than one of them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 25 2017, @12:22PM
Oh come on, they're making movies about it now: Hidden Figures. Then they let Sally Ride...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Sunday September 24 2017, @04:16PM (7 children)
Some 17 years ago (yeah, it was in 2000), we partnered with a company specializing in Bluetooth to put BT in our products. They had one guy, very smart, very abusive to his co-workers. The other company (a startup) ran out of money and shut down. This guy interviewed with us. We all gave him a thumbs up, he was very smart. Then our boss said "would any of you want to work with him?". A collective "aww hell no" was groaned, and we didn't hire him.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 24 2017, @06:29PM (6 children)
I chose to respond to you rather than the guy at the top, but what the hell is it with assuming that all people who are good at coding are assholes and poison apples? You know, such people exist who are good at their job and respected by their coworkers.
The only prick prima donnas I know are ones who have never held a real job because they think having to answer to others is for the birds. Yeah, they may be good at what they do, but they hate working for others just as much as those others hate working with them.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:33PM (1 child)
"They had one guy, very smart, very abusive to his co-workers."
It seemed to be stated up front, not inferred because they thought he was smart. Most of that bad reputation comes from the higher than average occurrence of coders being cranky assholes, and another part comes from people generally feeling insecure around people who know more than they do. Largely the first bit, the 2nd part is easily shrugged off by the smart person not being an asshole and helping out without being condescending and arrogant.
Is it fair for decent coders to be stigmatized by the stereotype of the indispensable asshole? No. But then again stereotypes are never fair and not often useful, but we're human so that isn't gonna change anytime soon. I'm sure plenty of cops get tired of being considered government goons due to the smaller % of bad cops and shitty legislation.
Given your posts on this site I can only assume you suffer from this stereotype. Perhaps stop trying to fight human nature of using superficial data to judge someone and instead work on being a more pleasant and agreeable human. There is a popular bit of modern slang used to categorize someone who expects the world to conform to themselves!
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday September 25 2017, @08:34AM
I believe a lot of this assholery is inadvertantly fomented in the workplace.
Remmber the Monkey, Cucumber, and Grape experiment? [youtube.com]
Someone works their ass off, denies themselves many social opportunities, and fun, in order to become more knowledgeable and productive in his art. Then he gets to watch someone else get the reward?
Ok, now we have angry monkey! Pissed off. Brilliant, and skilled, but unemployable.
I have watched this very same thing happen in several companies, usually immediately after the hiring of some "leadership skills" type. He started doing the same things the experimenter did in the video.
As we transitioned as a company from making things to how to kiss ass, things went downhill fast.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:36PM (1 child)
I was implying no such thing. I've worked with a lot of good coders who are good to work with, and only a few bad apples. This guy just stands out in my memory due to the level of assholiness he acheived.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:56PM
I have a small list of 'very smart' guys who I would never recommend. I have a very LONG list of 'very smart' guys who I would work with again in a heartbeat.
Your and my point is toxic behavior is not endemic to just smart people. I know one dude who is the biggest raging douchebag I have ever met, and he is probably in the 70ish iq range. Being smart does not mean they are good to work around. They can poison a whole group dynamic and chase off anyone who could be very helpful. A few bad apples can sink a project fast.
One of the people on my short list is a full on narcissist. Could be an excellent coder and manager. He will never achieve that. Once I recognized they symptoms he was very easy to deal with. He wanted his ego stroked and to be 'in charge'. I having grown up with that sort of thing gave him neither and made sure once he showed his colors he got nothing. I give everyone a pretty long rope, because shit happens. But once you cross that 'line' forget it.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday September 25 2017, @09:01AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 25 2017, @12:26PM
I'd say that every single prick prima donna "genius" I've ever worked with (in 30+ years) has been insecure and not nearly as good as his (and even, once, her) reputation. The biggest ones weren't even productive, but even among the productive ones - their code (or other output, mechanical design has had a couple over the years) had flaws, some of which they knew about, some of which they didn't (which is worse), all of which they covered up with bluster and most of all abrasive unpleasant personalities which discouraged collaboration and examination of the detail of their work.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @04:42PM (3 children)
but then there's the team, and no one wants to write code using any new features.
Imagine coming in wanting to use Java 8 code features, but using old Java 3 features, because the team can't/won't stop for a day or two and try. And the smart people on the team are beat down enough that they've given up too...
Not picking on Java. Could be Python 2 vs Python 3. .Net 1.x vs even .Net 2. and so many other platforms and languages...
SQL Server 2016 running as SQL Server 2005 (or 2000) compatability mode, for no specific (enterprise app would be specific reason) good reason...
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday September 24 2017, @04:44PM
The only times I haven't upgraded to a new version is when things break and it isn't worth the time/effort to fix it.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @02:50PM
3 years ago, I would have responded differently to your post. After experiencing a "legacy minded" team for the first time in my career, you are very, very right. When a team is stuck in the past using old technology and techniques, it is almost impossible to do anything "new". Bringing in a helpful rock star to help, doesn't really help. The team drags their feet and fights every step forward. They just won't adopt anything new because the old stuff worked at some time in the past. And because it's a group, thinking as a group, in a very harmoneous way, they don't change.
The collective intelligence of a group like this is surprising low. They can't adapt. They can't move forward. A single dev could make more progress than the entire team. Easily.
So, there are counter examples to the "team is always smarter than a single person" mantra.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday October 01 2017, @09:12AM
Python 3 fucking sucks. Python 2 for the win.
It's not about bleeding-edge features as much as it is support. And Python3 support sucks shit.
There are reasons for sticking with the old versions. Good reasons.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:08PM
Loose team with good communication works well, just like loose coupling with clean interface works well.
Going all in for this "team" thing will turn it into George Orwell's Animal Farm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:16PM
Collective intelligentsia will tend to stay with in they collective knowledge. There is no growth or push from outside of their comfort zone. So maintenance will make a better system. But looking to push the envelope you need a nonconformance to bring in better different tech to get to the next level. The collective will after time improve their skills if they are required to grow.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:49PM (4 children)
The older I grow, the more I prefer coding as a wank to coding as an orgy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 24 2017, @06:35PM (3 children)
Now that I'm coding for a living, I've lost all passion for it. Not working with my hands anymore is bad enough, but before I really didn't see how shitty documentation is, even on big projects. Programmers are autistic retards and If I see one more page of shitty documentation I'm going to go to their house and choke the living shit out of them. Makes me wish I would have went to get my ASE certification instead of a B.S. -- because that way I would actually learn something useful and be able to get actual work done.
I was never one of those abusive prima donna types, but programming for a living is very quickly turning me into one.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:53PM
Dammit, Eth, don't let'em cost you your sweet disposition.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday September 25 2017, @10:37AM
Funny, since I started to work with programming I got more humble and started to rely on documentation written with an austic degree of accuracy.
Then again - I work in infrastructure ;)
(Bit less tounge in cheek - toss a CV at GE, Boeing, Bombardier(can) and similar. Be warned however, engineers are trained in being precise and to document everything, and engineers with extra training in programming are darn near awe-inspiring.
Just remember that you no more would want Westinghouse to write an MMORPG than you'd want Blizzard to write the controlsystem for a nuclear reactor)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 25 2017, @12:54PM
Your ASE is going to turn to coding and electrical engineering in the next 20 years - the carburetor is already dead in the (real) commercial market, and working on antiques is a lot like making buggy whips.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Sunday September 24 2017, @06:50PM
It's important to realize that this study specifically assigned the kinds of tasks to groups that - in fact - require a group. As far as I can see from the article [researchgate.net], they (1) used tasks designed to be solved by groups, and (b) only used groups to solve these tasks.
In the first round of testing: "we drew tasks from all quadrants
of the McGrath Task Circumplex (6, 12), a well established
taxonomy of group tasks based on the
coordination processes they require. Tasks included
solving visual puzzles, brainstorming,
making collective moral judgments, and negotiating
over limited resources."
Given that context, they wanted to find out what kinds of groups produced the best solutions for these problems. For group performance, the two important factors were (1) social sensitivity and (2) everyone contributing to the discussion. The authors note that the correlation to having more women in the group is redundant with social sensitivity, since women score higher on that index.
- - - - -
Personal opinion: If you have a task that requires a group, of course you want to be able to get along with your group members. I'm sure we've all worked with jerks at one time or another - of course, they destroy group effectiveness. However, I suspect a threshold effect: Given a necessary degree of ability to work in a group, the competence of the members must surely become more important. A group of incompetent members will ultimately perform poorly. A group that works well together ought to be able to capitalize on the individual talents of its members.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:06PM (3 children)
A really effective team makes everyone better together than they'd be separately. If you've ever worked with someone who pushes you past limits you thought you had, you know what it's like.
There's no sure-fire way to achieve that harmonious collaboration, sadly. And even when you happen to develop it, all too often it proves evanescent. PHBs have a stupid proclivity for destroying beautiful things.
The presence or absence of a "superstar coder" does not preclude a great team developing. There are stable configurations that include those, even if the superstars are not good at playing with others (in that case, though, the other team members have to be tough enough to counter). In the end the proof is in the pudding. You go to work to produce good work, not to be chums with everyone.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Sunday September 24 2017, @10:02PM (2 children)
Actually, I don't know about you, but I always went to work to get a paycheck. Sure, doing good work might help in that regard, but I'm well aware that my pride in workmanship can and will be ruthlessly exploited by management to convince to, say, take lower salaries than I should, or work longer hours than I should.
As for being chums, no, that's not the goal, but if there's someone who's really hard to work with, that will definitely affect the quality of my work. Behaviors I've seen from the folks who are lousy at collaboration:
- Refusal to document anything, so the only way I can figure out how to use their sections of the code is to read it over and guess at what they're trying to do (which it may or may not do, of course).
- Refusal to put their stuff through the same kind of testing us mere mortals need, because their stuff is obviously so much better it doesn't need to be tested thoroughly. (And of course, it frequently doesn't work!)
- Refusal to negotiate designs, leaving the wrong components doing the wrong jobs and making everyone else code around their mistakes.
- Refusal to show up for meetings in a reasonably timely manner, leaving the rest of us sitting there waiting. We'd just get started without them, but if we don't wait they're just going to do whatever they feel like without knowing the details we've all worked out.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:16PM
That which is not tested is broken.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 25 2017, @12:32PM
The mythical man month still holds true in that: six coders given six months can produce the same output as one coder in one month.
Quality depends mostly on the individual(s) involved and the team's work style - a good team of six will be producing code that all six understand to some reasonable level, and as such it's generally more accessible to newcomers too.
If your projects are relatively simple, well budgeted, long running, and subject to turnover during the maintenance lifetime - sometimes the team of six makes a lot of sense for a product in the long run.
If you're making throwaway prototypes - just hire the genius and make six throwaways in the time of one for 1/4th the cost. Once you've got something that marketing can sell, then hire the team of six to rebuild and maintain it, because you're going to build an ecosystem of hundreds (hopefully thousands or millions) of people around this thing and you don't want it to all come crashing down when your genius checks out.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:14PM (2 children)
This article takes their sample for all their data, and conclusions, from Google. This seems reasonable. It is not. The problem with this is that Google has their pick of the cream of the crop for recruits. Most companies do not.
Let's take a segue to basketball for a minute. In highschool basketball if somebody is tall and athletic then they're pretty much going to be a god at basketball. But when you get to the NBA being tall and athletic is a baseline prerequisite. Because of that suddenly all of those other skills that their height/athleticism were able to overcome in high school suddenly become almost entirely what determines their performance in the NBA.
It's the same thing here. Imagine we were able to perfectly quantity a developer's competence. Google's range is going to be incredibly high - let's say 95-100. Whereas the average company is going to be hiring developers in the 15-80 range. Google doesn't have much room for differentiation in skills since everybody is, as a prerequisite of getting where they are - several sigmas outside the norm in terms of skill. So other skills that would normally be less relevant are suddenly major factors in overall performance differentiation.
So yes, give me the 1000 most athletic individuals in the world. And we'll set them to learning how to box. And in the end there will be skill sets that determine who becomes the best boxer among them. And that skill will not be athleticism, since it's hardly going to be able to be expressed in this sort of field. But that does not mean that athleticism is not the most relevant skill to becoming a good boxer. In fact it almost certainly is, by orders of magnitude. But when you start with a group where it is taken as a granted, its effect is artificially diminished.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @08:39AM
Very nice illustration of the concept of "conditional probability".
Thank you.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday September 25 2017, @09:09AM
As someone who works with teams at ARM, Apple, Google, and Microsoft on a fairly regular basis, I've not seen much evidence that Google people are better than anyone else, though they are far more likely to reinvent the wheel. Of these companies, ARM is the only one that doesn't seem to employ any idiots (though they're also smaller, so can be more selective, and probably have quite a lot of self-selection in their candidate pool).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:13PM
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:38PM
Loosely designated harems. Hear me out. Have you ever been the 1 or 2 people in a group of 5 or more dragging the rest along like boat anchors? But every now and then one of those anchors produces a good idea.. so that's group intelligence. Let's organize these groups properly. Head-to-head competition to determine the top two and then assign the remainder as designated work bitches. Get coffee. Make mail runs. Answer the shit emails. Fuck yeah group intelligence! I agree. Let's put Group Intelligence to work! Make Work Great Again.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Monday September 25 2017, @12:22PM
It seems like they got random groups to perform stupid tasks which might take 5 hours. They completely ignore the years of knowledge and practice it takes to become a skilled developer (or other knowledge worker). So the study is just idiotic in its simplicity. Nb: I didn't follow the paper trail to figure out what the subjects of the study actually did, I am just guessing from a few phrases in the paper.
Having done some courses on "this sort of thing" for work, I would say there is a common trend that social scientists take some very trivial or naive study like this and then make a big deal out of it. It is quite irritating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @12:01AM
A complex task may require skills that are more likely to show up in a team.
Using a team over a single incurs a communications cost which may negate the advantage of putting multiple, equally skilled folks on board.
So which wins?
The team wins if you are not counting the cost of effort put into the job because it can work as either a person or team.
If you think about a project lifecycle, the team wins because the single person that can do everything won't be around to support the whole life of the project.
So what to do?
Staff a project with a mix of prime movers and not to bring a diverse set of skills and willingness to stick around.