s-m-r-t

[rone]

Last week, i had a job interview (i'm looking because i'm tired of the night shift and i'm bored as hell and there hasn't been an opening in either the day shift of my group or in another group that i'm qualified for; that might change in 2 or 3 months, but i'm not willing to wait longer than that), and when i asked two of the guys who had just started working there what they liked best about their new employer, they both talked about how smart everyone was.  This made me wince on the inside, because in my experience, smarts only get you so far.  In systems operations, it's much more important to have people who work hard and play well with others than to have some super-sharp person bursting at the seams with cleverness and grand ideas, especially in an industry where it's often too easy to find a brilliant yet intractable coworker who's tolerated because of what they can do whenever they stop being an asshole.  Perhaps i'm biased, but i'd rather see the smart kids doing the programming so that us worker bees can get on with making the infrastructure hum.  I'm so glad i'm a Beta.  Or something.

Comments

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

I've asked myself a couple times recently if'n it's time for me to start job-hunting, which is probably a sign that it's time to start job-hunting.

One of my character flaws is that I put up with too much bullshit, and I'm starting to wonder if shit like this (http://also-huey.livejournal.com/450068.html) is a sign that I'm getting way too much bullshit to put up with.

[bryant]

I really hate macho sysadmins.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the last gig had one of those: worked insane hours until he crashed so he wasn't consistently available during the day, temper tantrums, and pushing the envelope for sexual harassment.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Sounds like that place suffered from bad management as well.

Note that "macho sysadmin" != "smart cow-orker". Pretty much by definition!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Well, in this case, he was both. Pretty damn sharp dude. Just... trouble.

[bryant]

What I've noticed is that some people really get off on saving the day in a desperate situation, cause that's where people really notice you. "Oh, yeah, he stayed up for three days straight rebuilding the SAN with a magnetic toothpick!" As opposed to "He spent three weeks reworking the monitoring system and adding monitors and we found out that the SAN was throwing sporadic disk failures so we replaced three disks and nobody ever noticed there was going to be a problem."

Smart, but stupid.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

http://al3x.net/2010/01/09/dont-be-a-hero.html

When i first read this, That Guy came to mind right away. So, yeah.

[epileptikitty.livejournal.com]

Alex leaves out a rather difficult but sure-fire technique: get the hero laid.

[epileptikitty.livejournal.com]

This personality trait often comes from being the oldest child of an alcoholic or otherwise periodically absent parent. Every so often there's a crisis and he pulls it all together and takes care of the younger siblings, and he's a hero, and then it's over.

So, clearly, there should be more crises.

Brave New World

[vampyrecat.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's better to be a Beta. The Alphas have to work so hard. The Alphas have so much responsibility. I'm glad I'm a Beta.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the job hunting. Personally I’m glad (most of the time) not to be directly operating user/customer-facing systems. Having tried it, it’s clear that I’m better at programming.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Trust me, genius cowboys can also mess up a programming project bad.

Even, perhaps especially, when by most metrics they are the most productive coders in the group. There's this bit of folklore that says the most productive programmers are two orders of magnitude more productive than the average, and every boss thinks, man, if I could only hire those guys and just lay off everyone else! But this is not necessarily wise.

I've read that metric, and I hate it ...

[freelikebeer.livejournal.com]

I think [imho] exceptional programmers are able to reduce problems by two orders of magnitude of complexity, but are 'productive' at the same rate.

Re: I've read that metric, and I hate it ...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think some guys are that much more productive because they're holding everyone else back.

Re: I've read that metric, and I hate it ...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Paul Graham is absolutely hero- and genius-besotted. His essays about software development always make me angry for that reason.