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

[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.