Done, and Gets Things Smart
Disclaimer: I do not speak for Google! These are my own views and opinions, and are not endorsed in any way by my employer, nor anyone else, for that matter.
Everyone knows and quotes Joel's old chestnut, "Smart, and Gets Things Done." It was a blog, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n a book, and now it's an aphorism.
People quote Joel's Proverb all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 time because it gives us all such a nice snuggly feeling. Why? Because to be in this industry at all, even a bottom-feeder, you have to be smart. You were probably cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 top kid in your elementary school class. People probably picked on you. You were cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 geek back when geeks weren't popular. But now "smart" is fashionable.
That's right! All those loser kneebiter jocks in high school who played varsity and got all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 girls and sported cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir big, winning, shark-white smiles as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y barely jee-parlor-fran-saysed cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir way through cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 classes you coasted through: where are cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y now? A bunch of sorry-ass bank managers and failed insurance salesmen and suit-wearing stiffs at big law firms working for billion-dollar conglomerates where cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir daddies got cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m VP jobs where cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y just have to show up and putt against cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r VPs on little astroturf greens in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 hallways!
That's right, los... er, well, some of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m are doing OK, I guess. "But cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're not as rich as Bill Gates!" That's cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r big tautology-cum-aphorism we geeks like to pull out when we're feeling insecure. Notwithstanding that Bill had a rich daddy and made his money through exactly cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 kind of corporate shenanigans that Big Meat is using on us today, with those selfsame jocks. We like to think cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 more important point is that Bill, Jobs, Bezos and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r tech billionaires (all fierce, business-savvy people) were geeks, and are thus evidence of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 revenge of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 nerds. And hey, tech did make a lot of money in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 80s and 90s. So "smart" is sort of in fashion now.
Unfortunately, "smart" is a generic enough concept that pretty much everyone in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 world thinks cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're smart. This is due to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Nobel-prize-winning Dunning-Kruger Effect, which says, in effect, that people don't know when cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're not smart. (Note: people have pointed out that it was an Ig-Nobel. Me == Dumbass. Fortunately, "me == dumbass" was more or less cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 point of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 article, so I'll let it stand.)
So looking for Smart is a bit problematic, since we aren't smart enough to distinguish it from B.S. The best we can do is find people who we think are smart because cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're a bit like us.
Er, what about Gets Stuff Done, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n? Well, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r qualification you need to be in this industry is that you have to have produced something. Anything at all. As soon as you write your first working program, you've gotten something done. And at that point you probably think of yourself as being a pretty hot market commodity, again because of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect.
So, like, what kind of people is this Smart, and Gets Things Done adage actually hiring?
I've said it before: I thought I was a top-5% (or so) programmer for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 first fifteen years I was coding. (1987-2002). Every time I learned something new, I thought "Gosh, I was really dumb for not knowing that, but now I'm definitely a superstar." It took me fifteen frigging years before I realized that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re might in fact still be "one or two things" left to learn, at which point I started looking outward and finally discovered how absolutely bambi-esquely thumperly incompetently clueless I really am. Fifteen years!
But hell, let's be honest here: I still think I'm smart. We all do. Sure, I've managed to figure out, at least partly, just how un-smart I am, but I've got cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 whole "I'm smart" thing so hardwired from when I was a kid surrounded by "dolts" who couldn't memorize things as fast as I could, or predict cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 teacher's punch line way in advance, or whatever questionable heuristic I was using for measuring my own smartness, that it's hard not to think that way. And of course cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "dolts" were way better than me at just about everything else. And cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y think cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're pretty smart too! Definitely above average, anyway.
Squaaaaawk
So we all think we're smart for different reasons. Mine was memorization. Smart, eh? In reality I was just a giant, uncomprehending parrot. I got my first big nasty surprise when I was in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Navy Nuclear Power School program in Orlando, Florida, and I was setting historical records for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 highest scores on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir exams. The courses and exams had been carefully designed over some 30 years to maximize and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n test "literal retention" of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 material. They gave you all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 material in outline form, and made you write it in your notebook, and your test answers were graded on edit-distance from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 original notes. (I'm not making this up or exaggerating in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 slightest.) They had set up cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ultimate parrot game, and I happily accepted. I memorized cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 entire notebooks word-for-word, and aced cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir tests.
They treated me like some sort of movie star — that is, until cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Radar final lab exam in electronics school, in which we had to troubleshoot an actual working (well, technically, not-working) radar system. I failed spectacularly: I'd arguably set anocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r historical record, because I had no idea what to do. I just stood cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re hemming and hawing and pooing myself for three hours. I hadn't understood a single thing I'd memorized. Hey man, I was just playing cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir game! But I lost. I mean, I still made it through just fine, but I lost cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 celebrity privileges in a big way.
Having a good memory is a serious impediment to understanding. It lets you cheat your way through life. I've never learned to read sheet music to anywhere near cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 level I can play (for both guitar and piano.) I have large-ish repertoires and, at least for guitar, good technique from lots of lessons, but since I could memorize cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 sheet music in one sitting, I never learned how to read it faster than about a measure a minute. (It's not a photographic memory - I have to work a little to commit it to memory. But it was a lot less work than learning to read cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 music.) And as a result, my repertoire is only a thousandth what it could be if I knew how to read.
My memory (and, you know, overall laziness) has made me musically illiterate.
But when you combine cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger effect (which affects me just as much as it does you) with having one or two things I've been good at in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 past, it's all too easy to fall into cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 trap of thinking of myself as "smart", even if I know better now. All you have to do, to be "smart", is have a little competency at something, anything at all, just enough to be dangerous, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect makes you think you're God's gift to that field, discipline, or what have you.
This is why everyone loves Smart, and Gets Things Done, which Joel always writes in boldface. We love it because right from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 start it has cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 yummy baked-in assumption that you are smart, and that you get things done. And it also tacitly assumes that you know how to identify ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r people with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same qualities!
But... you don't.
It sucks, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect is frighteningly universal. It's a devil's pitchfork two horrible, boldfaced prongs. First:
Incompetent people grossly overestimate cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir own competence
We already talked about that, right? You're a good programmer! Heck, you're a great programmer! You're "smart", so anything you don't know you can go look up if you need it! Right?
Welcome to incompetence.
The second prong is a bit longer, and has a barbed poison tip:
Incompetent people fail to recognize genuine skill in ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365rs
Both prongs are intrinsically funny when you're watching cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m in action in someone else, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're incomprehensible when anyone tries to poke you with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m. Not necessarily offensive, mind you: you might get offended if someone tries to imply that you're not as competent as you feel you are, but it's more likely (per cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 D-K effect) that you'll simply not believe cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m. Not even close. You're smart! They're just wrong! Gosh!
The second prong, that of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ability to recognize true competence, has major ramifications when we conduct interviews. That's what Joel was writing about in Smart and Gets Things Done, you know: conducting technical interviews.
How do you hire someone who's smarter than you? How do you tell if someone's smarter than you?
This is a problem I've thought about, over nearly twenty years of interviewing, and it appears that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 answer is: you can't. You just have to get lucky.
It's easy for a candidate to sound smart. Anyone can use big jargon-y words and talk cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 talk like nobody's business, but I'm living, breathing proof that articulacy doesn't connote any ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r form of intelligence. Heck, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Markov-chain synopses of my blogs that people post in quasi-jest tend to look like I wrote cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m.
All too often I find myself on interview loops where cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 candidate knows a seemingly astounding amount about coding, computer science, software engineering, and general industry topics, but we find out at cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 last minute that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y can't code Hello, World in any language.
This is, of course, one of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 failure-patterns that Joel's Get Things Done clause is designed to catch. But interviews are conducted under pretty artificial conditions, and as a result cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y wind up being most effective at hiring people who are good at interviewing. This is a special breed of parrot, in a way. Interviewing isn't a particularly good predictor of performance, any more than your rank in a coding competition is a predictor of real-world performance. In fact, somewhat depressingly, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re's almost no correlation whatsoever.
If interviews suck, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n why do we still do cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m this way?
Lots of reasons. One is just history: everyone else does it that way. Companies tend to hire pretty similar HR departments, and HR tends to guide companies towards doing it cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 way everyone else does it. Same goes for technical management, which is all too often HR-driven as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 company grows.
Anocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r is that interviewing is already a fairly time-intrusive function for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 interviewers, and it tends to be miserable for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 interviewees. Trying to make cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 process somehow more rigorous or accurate just exacerbates cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se side effects.
Anocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "rite of passage" phenomenon, wherein engineers feel that if cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y had to go through cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 gauntlet, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n everyone else should, too.
So for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 most part, everyone does cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same non-working variety of interviews, and hopes for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 best.
As far as identifying good people goes, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 best solution I've ever seen was at Geoworks, where you were required to do a six-month internship before you could get hired full-time. This seems to be cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 norm in non-tech departments at most tech companies. They often substitute "contractor" for "intern", but it works out roughly cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same. Geoworks is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 only company I've seen stick to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir guns and make it mandatory for engineers.
However, I'm convinced that it only worked because Geoworks seeded cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 engineering staff with great people. The founding engineers set up a truly beautiful software engineering environment, with lots of focus on tools, mentoring, continuing education, "anarchy projects" to let off steam and encourage innovation, and a host of ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r goodnesses.
I've been a contractor at companies that had no good engineers at all, literally none whatsoever. A mandatory six-month internship at such companies would only serve to lower cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir average bar, since anybody competent would leave after cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 six months was up. This doesn't contradict cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 D/K Effect. It's easy to spot lackluster, soulless engineering organizations, and doing so doesn't imply that you're especially smart.
The "Extended Interview"
Anyway, I've often wondered where cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Geoworks founders found such great engineers. The short answer is: "Berkeley", but I'm really looking for something deeper than that; namely: how did cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y know?
Along similar lines, I've long felt that Amazon's success was due in no small part to Bezos having seeded his tech staff with great engineers. World-class great. I don't know where or how he found cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m, since, again, how do you hire someone who's smarter than you? He's a brilliant guy, but his original choices (ex-Lucid folks, by and large) seem a stroke of blind luck that's hard to attribute to mere genius. I'll probably never know how it happened. Wish I did!
They weren't too big on software engineering, though, or more likely cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y all felt that time-to-market trumped everything else (and were correct, at least in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir case), so Amazon is successful but lacks a high-quality software engineering culture. It's gotten much better over cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 years, of course, but it's a far cry from Geoworks. It's largely up to individual teams at Amazon to decide how much engineering to sprinkle into cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir coding. There's no central group (or distributed peer group) who can tell any team how to build cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir software. This is effectively mandated from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 top, in fact.
But time-to-market is a pretty powerful business force. Maybe that's cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 missing link? Lucid was founded by Dick Gabriel, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "worse is better" guy, and Amazon took cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "worse is better" idea (internally) to untold new extremes.
Dunno! But it sure worked for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m.
Google has a process similar to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Geoworks 6-month internship idea. Geoworks's internship was a form of "extended interview", since it was obvious even in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 1980s that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 classic interview format isn't a very good predictor of performance. At Google, you don't have to do an internship. However, unlike at most ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r companies, you're not "slotted" into a real position on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 tech ladder until you've been on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 job at least six months. During that time you need to prove that you can function at cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 level you were hired for, and if it's wrong in eicá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r direction your level is adjusted at slotting time.
The "extended interview" (in any form) is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 only solution I've ever seen to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 horrible dilemma, How do you hire someone smarter than you? Or even cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 simpler problem, How do you identify someone who's actually Smart, and Gets Things Done? Interviews alone just don't cut it.
Let me say it more directly, for those of you who haven't taken this personally yet: you can't do what Joel is asking you to do. You're not qualified. The Smart and Gets Things Done approach to interviewing will only get you copies of yourself, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 work of Dunning and Kruger implies that if you hire someone better than you are, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n it's entirely accidental.
Don't get me wrong: you should still try! Don't throw cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 bath and baby away. Smart and Gets Things Done is a good weeder function to filter out some of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 common "epic fail" types.
But realize that this approach has a cost: it will also filter out some people who are just as good as you, if not better, or even way better, along dimensions that are entirely invisible to you due to Dunning-Kruger forces mostly beyond your control.
So cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re's this related interviewing/hiring heuristic that I think may better approximate cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 kinds of people you really want to hire: Done, and Gets Things Smart.
I'll take Joel's cue and write it in bold so you know it's important. It's not condescending or anything. Really. Let's all recite it togecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r, to make it catchy and stuff. Maybe we should have a little ditty for it, so it sticks in our heads annoyingly, forever. I think cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Happy Birthday song will do nicely:
Hap-py Birth-day To Yooooooou,
Done-and Geh-ets Things Smaaaart
Hmmm hmm HMMMMM Hmmmm Hmmmm whoeeeeeever
Done and geh-eeeeeets thiiiiiings Smaaaaaaaart *clap* *clap*
There! You'll remember it every time anyone has a birthday.
Done, and Gets Things Smart
All gentle faux-condescension aside (or as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 classroom jocks would have read, "fox condesomething"), Joel's Smart, and Gets Things Done heuristic seems really obvious to everyone. It has this magical "we're all smart in this togecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r" appeal. But sadly, for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 reasons I've outlined, almost everyone interprets it to mean "Carbon Copy, of Myself". Great guidance gone astray!
The Done, and Gets Things Smart approach is also a way of finding great people, but it recognizes that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect requires some countermeasures. It's modeled on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 early successes I've witnessed at Geoworks, Amazon, and Google, all of whom had one thing in common: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y hired brilliant seed engineers. This boldface is really addictive when you get started on it!
They all managed to continue hiring great people afterwards, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 seed engineers were cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 most important. I'm hoping that this is intuitively obvious in much cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same way that wanting smart people who get things done is intuitively obvious.
I think you really, really want great seed engineers, and that this is a different class of engineer from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "pretty darn good" engineer we typically hire using Joel's oft-misinterpreted advice.
Seed engineers. It's key. You can apply cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "I want ideal seed engineers" rule recursively to an organization, a department, a project, a team, and even your officemates. We're not just talking about startups.
Let me ask you a brutally honest question: since you began interviewing, how many of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 engineers you've voted thumbs-up on (i.e. "hire!"), are engineers you'd personally hire to work with you in your first startup company? Let's say this is a hypocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365tical company you're going to found someday when you have just a little more financial freedom and a great idea.
I posit that most of you, willing to admit it or not, have a lower bar for your current company than you would for your own personal startup company.
The people you'd want to be in your startup are not of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Smart and Gets Things Done variety.
For your startup (or, applying cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 recursion, for your new project at your current company), you don't want someone who's "smart". You're not looking for "eager to learn", "picks things up quickly", "proven track record of ramping up fast".
No! Screw that. You want someone who's superhumanly godlike. Someone who can teach you a bunch of stuff. Someone you admire and wish you could emulate, not someone who you think will admire and emulate you.
You want someone who, when you give cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m a project to research, will come in on Monday and say: "I'm Done, and by cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 way I improved cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 existing infrastructure while I was at it."
Someone who always seems to be finishing stuff so fast it makes your head spin. That's what my Done clause means. It means cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're frigging done all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 time.
I met my first Done, and Gets Things Smart engineers back at Geoworks. This was looong before I had any sort of a clue that I suck as an engineer, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se folks (Andrew Wilson and Chris Thomas, if you really must know) were weird. They never seemed to be working that hard, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y were not only 10x as productive as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir peers, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y also managed technical feats that were quite frankly too scary for anyone else. They could (as just one trait) dive in and learn new languages and make fixes to tools that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 rest of us assumed were, I dunno, stuff you'd normally pay a vendor to fix. They dove into cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 hairiest depths of every code base cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y encountered and didn't just add features and make fixes; cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y waved some sort of magic wand and improved cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 system while cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y were in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y would Get Things Smart. Make cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 systems smarter, that is. Sort of like getting your act togecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y'd do it for your code.
I've met many more such engineers along cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 way. They're out cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re. They're better than you. They were better twenty years ago than I am today or ever will be. Maybe it's natural ability. Maybe it's luck in education or upbringing. Maybe cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y have a secret recipe for improving rapidly and learning utter fearlessness. I don't know. But I've met 'em, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y aren't "smart". They're abso-flutely fugging brilliant.
You can't interview cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se people. For starters, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're not interested; cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se are cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 people that companies hold on to as long as humanly or companyly possible. The kinds of people that companies file lawsuits over when cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're recruited away.
You can only find Done, and Gets Things Smart people in two ways, and one of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m I still don't understand very well.
The first way is to get real lucky and have one as a coworker or classmate. You work with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m for a few years and come to realize cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're just cut from a finer cloth than you and your ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r unwashed cohorts. You may be friends with some of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m, which helps with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 recruiting a little, but not necessarily. The important thing is that you recognize cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m, even if you don't know what makes cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m tick.
This is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 one great hope we programmers have for fighting cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 one hope we have for getting something better than cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 average "just like me" Solid Plugger Joe Nobody you pick up with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Smart, and Gets Things Done approach. Our only "out" is that working side-by-side with someone will show us clearly when cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y vastly outclass us.
Your devious little mind will come up with all sorts of rationalizations for why cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're so damn good, so you can continue to think of yourself as Smart, and Gets Things Done material. You may conclude that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're just a genetic anomaly, and it's no fair even trying to compare yourself to someone who obviously has an unfair gift from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 heavens. Or you may tell yourself that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're just a domain expert in various domains that you don't "need" right now. Or you may simply choose not to think about it too much. Good Old Compartmentalization to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 rescue!
But working with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m directly will show you when cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're better. It's cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 only way. You'll gradually realize that your math deficiencies aren't just something that you might need to beef up on if you ever "need to"; you'll see that virtually every problem space has a macá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365matical modeling component that you were blissfully unaware of until Done, and Gets Things Smart gal points it out to you and says, "There's an infinitely smarter approach, which by cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 way I implemented over cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 weekend." You stare slack-jawed for a little while, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n she says: "Here's a ball. Why don't you go bounce it?"
These people aren't just pure gold; cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're golden-egg-laying geese. They are cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ones you want to bring with you to your own startup. Not cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Smart, and Gets Things Done, Just As Soon As I Read Up On The Subject, On The Company's Dime riff-raff like you and me. No. They're your seed engineers: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ones who will make or break your company with both cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir initial technical output and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 engineering-culture decisions cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y put into place — decisions that will largely determine how cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 company works for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 next twenty years.
I've been debating whecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r to say this, since it'll smack vaguely of obsequiousness, but I've realized that one of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Google seed engineers (exactly one) is almost singlehandedly responsible for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 amazing quality of Google's engineering culture. And I mean both in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 sense of having established it, and also in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 sense of keeping cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 wheel spinning. I won't name cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 person, and for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 record he almost certainly loacá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365s me, for reasons that are my own damn fault. But I'd hire him in a heartbeat: more evidence, I think, that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Done, and Gets Things Smart folks aren't necessarily your friends. They're just people you're lucky enough to have worked with.
At first it's entirely non-obvious who's responsible for Google's culture of engineering discipline: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 design docs, audited code reviews, early design reviews, readability reviews, resisting introduction of new languages, unit testing and code coverage, profiling and performance testing, etc. You know. The whole gamut of processes and tools that quality engineering organizations use to ensure that code is open, readable, documented, and generally non-shoddy work.
But if you keep an eye on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 emails that go out to Google's engineering staff, over time a pattern emerges: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re's one superheroic dude who's keeping us all in line.
How do you interview for such a person? You can't! Everyone will tell you cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're God's Gift to engineering quality. Everyone knows how to give it impressive lip service. Heck, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re are lots of people who take it way too far and try to gridlock cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 organization in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir over-enthusiasm, when what you really want is a balanced and pragmatic approach. I'd argue that it's virtually impossible to detect cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se "soft skills" in a classic interview setting, except to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 extent that you're hiring your own clone, which according to our cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365sis here, is NOT what you want. You want Done, and Gets Things Smart: done faster than you, and made your system smarter!
I'm guessing that Google's founders worked with this person in school, enough to recognize his valuable talents. Hence cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y used Identification Approach #1: get lucky in who you work with.
Incidentally, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y hired plenty of ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r brilliant seed engineers who were equally responsible for Google's great technical infrastructure. I'm just using this one guy as an illustrative example. But you really want cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Done, and Gets Things Smart people on every team. If you could mix in one Done, and Gets Things Smart person with every five to ten Smart, and Gets Things Done people, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n you'd be in good shape, since cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 latter, being "smart", can hopefully learn a lot from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 former.
But when you're starting a company, or an organization, or a big project, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 need for Done, and Gets Things Smart seed engineers is desperate. It's dire, in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 sense that if you don't get cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 right seed people in place, you're dooming your organization to mediocrity, if you manage to succeed at all.
And it's direst when you're in a startup, because you can't pillage people from elsewhere in your organization who you know are good. And because Done, and Gets Things Smart people are worth cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir weight in refined plutonium, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're probably reasonably happy in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir current position.
So let's assume you're looking at cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 vast ocean of programmers, all of whom are self-professed superstars who've gotten lots of "stuff" done, and you want to identify not cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 superstars, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 super-heroes.
How do you do it? Well, Brian Dougherty of Geoworks did it somehow. Jeff Bezos did it somehow. Larry and Sergey did it somehow. I'm willing to bet good money that every successful tech company out cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re had some freakishly good seed engineers. But a lot of company heads who make cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se decisions aren't necessarily industry programmers, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y still manage to find some world-class people in all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 noise. So cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re must be a second way to identify Done, and Gets Things Smart.
I think Identification Approach #2, and this is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 one I don't understand very well, is that you "ask around". You know. You manually perform cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 graph build-and-traversal done by cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Facebook "Smartest Friend" plug-in, where you ask everyone to name cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 best engineer cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y know, and continue doing that until it converges.
I think this might work, assuming you have lots of connections initially (lots of roots for your graph), so you don't get stuck in some slummy local minimum.
I've seen companies go to university professors and ask cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m who cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir brightest students are; that's a variant of this approach, although it usually only turns up future Done, and Gets Things Smart engineers. Every once in a very rare while you'll get a recent college grad in this category, but I think more often cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y tend to be experienced enough to make Gandalf feel young again.
Because technical brilliance, seemingly superhuman productivity, and near-militaristic adherence to software discipline aren't enough. They also need leadership skills. They don't have to be great leaders; in fact in a pinch, just being bossy might work for a while, as long as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're bossing people in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 right directions. But cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y need to have cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ability to guide cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 organization (or new team, or whatever) in uniformly excellent directions, which requires some leadership, even if it's bad or amateurish leadership.
As much as I suspect Approach #2 may work, I think Approach #1 is probably more reliable. Take a closer look at your coworkers who are doing things that you "could learn if you ever need it". Read up on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 old Dunning-Kruger Effect. I recommend it with irony dialed at 11, since personally I have yet to read more than cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Wikipedia article and a few ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r articles here and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re. I'll read it if I "need to". Psh.
Done, and Gets Things Smart
Not superstars: superheroes! People who are freakishly good at what cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y do. People who finish things so fast that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y seem to have paranormal assistance. People who can take in any new system or design for all intents instantaneously, with no "ramp-up", and who can immediately bring insights to bear that are quite simply beyond your rustic abilities.
Those are cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 folks you want. I'm not going to tell you: "Don't settle for less." Far from it. You still want to hire cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Smart, and Gets Things Done folks. But those folks have a long way to grow, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y probably have absolutely no idea just how far it is. So you want some Done, and Gets Things Smart people to guide cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m.
And now, to play us out...
Dooooone and Ge-ets Things Smart,
Done and Ge-ets Things Smart,
Done and Geeee-eeeets Thiiings Smaaaa-aaaart,
Done and Ge-ets Things Smart!
Everyone knows and quotes Joel's old chestnut, "Smart, and Gets Things Done." It was a blog, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n a book, and now it's an aphorism.
People quote Joel's Proverb all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 time because it gives us all such a nice snuggly feeling. Why? Because to be in this industry at all, even a bottom-feeder, you have to be smart. You were probably cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 top kid in your elementary school class. People probably picked on you. You were cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 geek back when geeks weren't popular. But now "smart" is fashionable.
That's right! All those loser kneebiter jocks in high school who played varsity and got all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 girls and sported cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir big, winning, shark-white smiles as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y barely jee-parlor-fran-saysed cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir way through cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 classes you coasted through: where are cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y now? A bunch of sorry-ass bank managers and failed insurance salesmen and suit-wearing stiffs at big law firms working for billion-dollar conglomerates where cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir daddies got cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m VP jobs where cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y just have to show up and putt against cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r VPs on little astroturf greens in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 hallways!
That's right, los... er, well, some of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m are doing OK, I guess. "But cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're not as rich as Bill Gates!" That's cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r big tautology-cum-aphorism we geeks like to pull out when we're feeling insecure. Notwithstanding that Bill had a rich daddy and made his money through exactly cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 kind of corporate shenanigans that Big Meat is using on us today, with those selfsame jocks. We like to think cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 more important point is that Bill, Jobs, Bezos and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r tech billionaires (all fierce, business-savvy people) were geeks, and are thus evidence of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 revenge of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 nerds. And hey, tech did make a lot of money in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 80s and 90s. So "smart" is sort of in fashion now.
Unfortunately, "smart" is a generic enough concept that pretty much everyone in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 world thinks cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're smart. This is due to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Nobel-prize-winning Dunning-Kruger Effect, which says, in effect, that people don't know when cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're not smart. (Note: people have pointed out that it was an Ig-Nobel. Me == Dumbass. Fortunately, "me == dumbass" was more or less cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 point of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 article, so I'll let it stand.)
So looking for Smart is a bit problematic, since we aren't smart enough to distinguish it from B.S. The best we can do is find people who we think are smart because cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're a bit like us.
Er, what about Gets Stuff Done, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n? Well, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r qualification you need to be in this industry is that you have to have produced something. Anything at all. As soon as you write your first working program, you've gotten something done. And at that point you probably think of yourself as being a pretty hot market commodity, again because of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect.
So, like, what kind of people is this Smart, and Gets Things Done adage actually hiring?
I've said it before: I thought I was a top-5% (or so) programmer for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 first fifteen years I was coding. (1987-2002). Every time I learned something new, I thought "Gosh, I was really dumb for not knowing that, but now I'm definitely a superstar." It took me fifteen frigging years before I realized that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re might in fact still be "one or two things" left to learn, at which point I started looking outward and finally discovered how absolutely bambi-esquely thumperly incompetently clueless I really am. Fifteen years!
But hell, let's be honest here: I still think I'm smart. We all do. Sure, I've managed to figure out, at least partly, just how un-smart I am, but I've got cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 whole "I'm smart" thing so hardwired from when I was a kid surrounded by "dolts" who couldn't memorize things as fast as I could, or predict cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 teacher's punch line way in advance, or whatever questionable heuristic I was using for measuring my own smartness, that it's hard not to think that way. And of course cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "dolts" were way better than me at just about everything else. And cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y think cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're pretty smart too! Definitely above average, anyway.
Squaaaaawk
So we all think we're smart for different reasons. Mine was memorization. Smart, eh? In reality I was just a giant, uncomprehending parrot. I got my first big nasty surprise when I was in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Navy Nuclear Power School program in Orlando, Florida, and I was setting historical records for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 highest scores on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir exams. The courses and exams had been carefully designed over some 30 years to maximize and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n test "literal retention" of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 material. They gave you all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 material in outline form, and made you write it in your notebook, and your test answers were graded on edit-distance from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 original notes. (I'm not making this up or exaggerating in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 slightest.) They had set up cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ultimate parrot game, and I happily accepted. I memorized cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 entire notebooks word-for-word, and aced cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir tests.
They treated me like some sort of movie star — that is, until cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Radar final lab exam in electronics school, in which we had to troubleshoot an actual working (well, technically, not-working) radar system. I failed spectacularly: I'd arguably set anocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r historical record, because I had no idea what to do. I just stood cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re hemming and hawing and pooing myself for three hours. I hadn't understood a single thing I'd memorized. Hey man, I was just playing cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir game! But I lost. I mean, I still made it through just fine, but I lost cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 celebrity privileges in a big way.
Having a good memory is a serious impediment to understanding. It lets you cheat your way through life. I've never learned to read sheet music to anywhere near cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 level I can play (for both guitar and piano.) I have large-ish repertoires and, at least for guitar, good technique from lots of lessons, but since I could memorize cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 sheet music in one sitting, I never learned how to read it faster than about a measure a minute. (It's not a photographic memory - I have to work a little to commit it to memory. But it was a lot less work than learning to read cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 music.) And as a result, my repertoire is only a thousandth what it could be if I knew how to read.
My memory (and, you know, overall laziness) has made me musically illiterate.
But when you combine cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger effect (which affects me just as much as it does you) with having one or two things I've been good at in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 past, it's all too easy to fall into cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 trap of thinking of myself as "smart", even if I know better now. All you have to do, to be "smart", is have a little competency at something, anything at all, just enough to be dangerous, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect makes you think you're God's gift to that field, discipline, or what have you.
This is why everyone loves Smart, and Gets Things Done, which Joel always writes in boldface. We love it because right from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 start it has cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 yummy baked-in assumption that you are smart, and that you get things done. And it also tacitly assumes that you know how to identify ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r people with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same qualities!
But... you don't.
It sucks, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect is frighteningly universal. It's a devil's pitchfork two horrible, boldfaced prongs. First:
Incompetent people grossly overestimate cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir own competence
We already talked about that, right? You're a good programmer! Heck, you're a great programmer! You're "smart", so anything you don't know you can go look up if you need it! Right?
Welcome to incompetence.
The second prong is a bit longer, and has a barbed poison tip:
Incompetent people fail to recognize genuine skill in ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365rs
Both prongs are intrinsically funny when you're watching cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m in action in someone else, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're incomprehensible when anyone tries to poke you with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m. Not necessarily offensive, mind you: you might get offended if someone tries to imply that you're not as competent as you feel you are, but it's more likely (per cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 D-K effect) that you'll simply not believe cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m. Not even close. You're smart! They're just wrong! Gosh!
The second prong, that of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ability to recognize true competence, has major ramifications when we conduct interviews. That's what Joel was writing about in Smart and Gets Things Done, you know: conducting technical interviews.
How do you hire someone who's smarter than you? How do you tell if someone's smarter than you?
This is a problem I've thought about, over nearly twenty years of interviewing, and it appears that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 answer is: you can't. You just have to get lucky.
It's easy for a candidate to sound smart. Anyone can use big jargon-y words and talk cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 talk like nobody's business, but I'm living, breathing proof that articulacy doesn't connote any ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r form of intelligence. Heck, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Markov-chain synopses of my blogs that people post in quasi-jest tend to look like I wrote cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m.
All too often I find myself on interview loops where cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 candidate knows a seemingly astounding amount about coding, computer science, software engineering, and general industry topics, but we find out at cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 last minute that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y can't code Hello, World in any language.
This is, of course, one of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 failure-patterns that Joel's Get Things Done clause is designed to catch. But interviews are conducted under pretty artificial conditions, and as a result cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y wind up being most effective at hiring people who are good at interviewing. This is a special breed of parrot, in a way. Interviewing isn't a particularly good predictor of performance, any more than your rank in a coding competition is a predictor of real-world performance. In fact, somewhat depressingly, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re's almost no correlation whatsoever.
If interviews suck, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n why do we still do cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m this way?
Lots of reasons. One is just history: everyone else does it that way. Companies tend to hire pretty similar HR departments, and HR tends to guide companies towards doing it cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 way everyone else does it. Same goes for technical management, which is all too often HR-driven as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 company grows.
Anocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r is that interviewing is already a fairly time-intrusive function for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 interviewers, and it tends to be miserable for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 interviewees. Trying to make cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 process somehow more rigorous or accurate just exacerbates cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se side effects.
Anocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "rite of passage" phenomenon, wherein engineers feel that if cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y had to go through cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 gauntlet, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n everyone else should, too.
So for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 most part, everyone does cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same non-working variety of interviews, and hopes for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 best.
As far as identifying good people goes, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 best solution I've ever seen was at Geoworks, where you were required to do a six-month internship before you could get hired full-time. This seems to be cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 norm in non-tech departments at most tech companies. They often substitute "contractor" for "intern", but it works out roughly cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same. Geoworks is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 only company I've seen stick to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir guns and make it mandatory for engineers.
However, I'm convinced that it only worked because Geoworks seeded cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 engineering staff with great people. The founding engineers set up a truly beautiful software engineering environment, with lots of focus on tools, mentoring, continuing education, "anarchy projects" to let off steam and encourage innovation, and a host of ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r goodnesses.
I've been a contractor at companies that had no good engineers at all, literally none whatsoever. A mandatory six-month internship at such companies would only serve to lower cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir average bar, since anybody competent would leave after cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 six months was up. This doesn't contradict cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 D/K Effect. It's easy to spot lackluster, soulless engineering organizations, and doing so doesn't imply that you're especially smart.
The "Extended Interview"
Anyway, I've often wondered where cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Geoworks founders found such great engineers. The short answer is: "Berkeley", but I'm really looking for something deeper than that; namely: how did cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y know?
Along similar lines, I've long felt that Amazon's success was due in no small part to Bezos having seeded his tech staff with great engineers. World-class great. I don't know where or how he found cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m, since, again, how do you hire someone who's smarter than you? He's a brilliant guy, but his original choices (ex-Lucid folks, by and large) seem a stroke of blind luck that's hard to attribute to mere genius. I'll probably never know how it happened. Wish I did!
They weren't too big on software engineering, though, or more likely cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y all felt that time-to-market trumped everything else (and were correct, at least in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir case), so Amazon is successful but lacks a high-quality software engineering culture. It's gotten much better over cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 years, of course, but it's a far cry from Geoworks. It's largely up to individual teams at Amazon to decide how much engineering to sprinkle into cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir coding. There's no central group (or distributed peer group) who can tell any team how to build cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir software. This is effectively mandated from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 top, in fact.
But time-to-market is a pretty powerful business force. Maybe that's cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 missing link? Lucid was founded by Dick Gabriel, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "worse is better" guy, and Amazon took cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "worse is better" idea (internally) to untold new extremes.
Dunno! But it sure worked for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m.
Google has a process similar to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Geoworks 6-month internship idea. Geoworks's internship was a form of "extended interview", since it was obvious even in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 1980s that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 classic interview format isn't a very good predictor of performance. At Google, you don't have to do an internship. However, unlike at most ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r companies, you're not "slotted" into a real position on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 tech ladder until you've been on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 job at least six months. During that time you need to prove that you can function at cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 level you were hired for, and if it's wrong in eicá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r direction your level is adjusted at slotting time.
The "extended interview" (in any form) is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 only solution I've ever seen to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 horrible dilemma, How do you hire someone smarter than you? Or even cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 simpler problem, How do you identify someone who's actually Smart, and Gets Things Done? Interviews alone just don't cut it.
Let me say it more directly, for those of you who haven't taken this personally yet: you can't do what Joel is asking you to do. You're not qualified. The Smart and Gets Things Done approach to interviewing will only get you copies of yourself, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 work of Dunning and Kruger implies that if you hire someone better than you are, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n it's entirely accidental.
Don't get me wrong: you should still try! Don't throw cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 bath and baby away. Smart and Gets Things Done is a good weeder function to filter out some of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 common "epic fail" types.
But realize that this approach has a cost: it will also filter out some people who are just as good as you, if not better, or even way better, along dimensions that are entirely invisible to you due to Dunning-Kruger forces mostly beyond your control.
So cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re's this related interviewing/hiring heuristic that I think may better approximate cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 kinds of people you really want to hire: Done, and Gets Things Smart.
I'll take Joel's cue and write it in bold so you know it's important. It's not condescending or anything. Really. Let's all recite it togecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r, to make it catchy and stuff. Maybe we should have a little ditty for it, so it sticks in our heads annoyingly, forever. I think cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Happy Birthday song will do nicely:
Hap-py Birth-day To Yooooooou,
Done-and Geh-ets Things Smaaaart
Hmmm hmm HMMMMM Hmmmm Hmmmm whoeeeeeever
Done and geh-eeeeeets thiiiiiings Smaaaaaaaart *clap* *clap*
There! You'll remember it every time anyone has a birthday.
Done, and Gets Things Smart
All gentle faux-condescension aside (or as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 classroom jocks would have read, "fox condesomething"), Joel's Smart, and Gets Things Done heuristic seems really obvious to everyone. It has this magical "we're all smart in this togecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r" appeal. But sadly, for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 reasons I've outlined, almost everyone interprets it to mean "Carbon Copy, of Myself". Great guidance gone astray!
The Done, and Gets Things Smart approach is also a way of finding great people, but it recognizes that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect requires some countermeasures. It's modeled on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 early successes I've witnessed at Geoworks, Amazon, and Google, all of whom had one thing in common: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y hired brilliant seed engineers. This boldface is really addictive when you get started on it!
They all managed to continue hiring great people afterwards, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 seed engineers were cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 most important. I'm hoping that this is intuitively obvious in much cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 same way that wanting smart people who get things done is intuitively obvious.
I think you really, really want great seed engineers, and that this is a different class of engineer from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "pretty darn good" engineer we typically hire using Joel's oft-misinterpreted advice.
Seed engineers. It's key. You can apply cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 "I want ideal seed engineers" rule recursively to an organization, a department, a project, a team, and even your officemates. We're not just talking about startups.
Let me ask you a brutally honest question: since you began interviewing, how many of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 engineers you've voted thumbs-up on (i.e. "hire!"), are engineers you'd personally hire to work with you in your first startup company? Let's say this is a hypocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365tical company you're going to found someday when you have just a little more financial freedom and a great idea.
I posit that most of you, willing to admit it or not, have a lower bar for your current company than you would for your own personal startup company.
The people you'd want to be in your startup are not of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Smart and Gets Things Done variety.
For your startup (or, applying cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 recursion, for your new project at your current company), you don't want someone who's "smart". You're not looking for "eager to learn", "picks things up quickly", "proven track record of ramping up fast".
No! Screw that. You want someone who's superhumanly godlike. Someone who can teach you a bunch of stuff. Someone you admire and wish you could emulate, not someone who you think will admire and emulate you.
You want someone who, when you give cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m a project to research, will come in on Monday and say: "I'm Done, and by cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 way I improved cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 existing infrastructure while I was at it."
Someone who always seems to be finishing stuff so fast it makes your head spin. That's what my Done clause means. It means cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're frigging done all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 time.
I met my first Done, and Gets Things Smart engineers back at Geoworks. This was looong before I had any sort of a clue that I suck as an engineer, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se folks (Andrew Wilson and Chris Thomas, if you really must know) were weird. They never seemed to be working that hard, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y were not only 10x as productive as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir peers, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y also managed technical feats that were quite frankly too scary for anyone else. They could (as just one trait) dive in and learn new languages and make fixes to tools that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 rest of us assumed were, I dunno, stuff you'd normally pay a vendor to fix. They dove into cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 hairiest depths of every code base cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y encountered and didn't just add features and make fixes; cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y waved some sort of magic wand and improved cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 system while cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y were in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y would Get Things Smart. Make cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 systems smarter, that is. Sort of like getting your act togecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y'd do it for your code.
I've met many more such engineers along cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 way. They're out cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re. They're better than you. They were better twenty years ago than I am today or ever will be. Maybe it's natural ability. Maybe it's luck in education or upbringing. Maybe cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y have a secret recipe for improving rapidly and learning utter fearlessness. I don't know. But I've met 'em, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y aren't "smart". They're abso-flutely fugging brilliant.
You can't interview cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se people. For starters, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're not interested; cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se are cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 people that companies hold on to as long as humanly or companyly possible. The kinds of people that companies file lawsuits over when cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're recruited away.
You can only find Done, and Gets Things Smart people in two ways, and one of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m I still don't understand very well.
The first way is to get real lucky and have one as a coworker or classmate. You work with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m for a few years and come to realize cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're just cut from a finer cloth than you and your ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r unwashed cohorts. You may be friends with some of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m, which helps with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 recruiting a little, but not necessarily. The important thing is that you recognize cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m, even if you don't know what makes cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m tick.
This is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 one great hope we programmers have for fighting cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Dunning-Kruger Effect, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 one hope we have for getting something better than cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 average "just like me" Solid Plugger Joe Nobody you pick up with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Smart, and Gets Things Done approach. Our only "out" is that working side-by-side with someone will show us clearly when cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y vastly outclass us.
Your devious little mind will come up with all sorts of rationalizations for why cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're so damn good, so you can continue to think of yourself as Smart, and Gets Things Done material. You may conclude that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're just a genetic anomaly, and it's no fair even trying to compare yourself to someone who obviously has an unfair gift from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 heavens. Or you may tell yourself that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're just a domain expert in various domains that you don't "need" right now. Or you may simply choose not to think about it too much. Good Old Compartmentalization to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 rescue!
But working with cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m directly will show you when cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're better. It's cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 only way. You'll gradually realize that your math deficiencies aren't just something that you might need to beef up on if you ever "need to"; you'll see that virtually every problem space has a macá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365matical modeling component that you were blissfully unaware of until Done, and Gets Things Smart gal points it out to you and says, "There's an infinitely smarter approach, which by cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 way I implemented over cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 weekend." You stare slack-jawed for a little while, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n she says: "Here's a ball. Why don't you go bounce it?"
These people aren't just pure gold; cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're golden-egg-laying geese. They are cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ones you want to bring with you to your own startup. Not cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Smart, and Gets Things Done, Just As Soon As I Read Up On The Subject, On The Company's Dime riff-raff like you and me. No. They're your seed engineers: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ones who will make or break your company with both cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir initial technical output and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 engineering-culture decisions cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y put into place — decisions that will largely determine how cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 company works for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 next twenty years.
I've been debating whecá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r to say this, since it'll smack vaguely of obsequiousness, but I've realized that one of cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Google seed engineers (exactly one) is almost singlehandedly responsible for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 amazing quality of Google's engineering culture. And I mean both in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 sense of having established it, and also in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 sense of keeping cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 wheel spinning. I won't name cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 person, and for cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 record he almost certainly loacá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365s me, for reasons that are my own damn fault. But I'd hire him in a heartbeat: more evidence, I think, that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Done, and Gets Things Smart folks aren't necessarily your friends. They're just people you're lucky enough to have worked with.
At first it's entirely non-obvious who's responsible for Google's culture of engineering discipline: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 design docs, audited code reviews, early design reviews, readability reviews, resisting introduction of new languages, unit testing and code coverage, profiling and performance testing, etc. You know. The whole gamut of processes and tools that quality engineering organizations use to ensure that code is open, readable, documented, and generally non-shoddy work.
But if you keep an eye on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 emails that go out to Google's engineering staff, over time a pattern emerges: cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re's one superheroic dude who's keeping us all in line.
How do you interview for such a person? You can't! Everyone will tell you cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're God's Gift to engineering quality. Everyone knows how to give it impressive lip service. Heck, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re are lots of people who take it way too far and try to gridlock cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 organization in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir over-enthusiasm, when what you really want is a balanced and pragmatic approach. I'd argue that it's virtually impossible to detect cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se "soft skills" in a classic interview setting, except to cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 extent that you're hiring your own clone, which according to our cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365sis here, is NOT what you want. You want Done, and Gets Things Smart: done faster than you, and made your system smarter!
I'm guessing that Google's founders worked with this person in school, enough to recognize his valuable talents. Hence cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y used Identification Approach #1: get lucky in who you work with.
Incidentally, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y hired plenty of ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r brilliant seed engineers who were equally responsible for Google's great technical infrastructure. I'm just using this one guy as an illustrative example. But you really want cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Done, and Gets Things Smart people on every team. If you could mix in one Done, and Gets Things Smart person with every five to ten Smart, and Gets Things Done people, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365n you'd be in good shape, since cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 latter, being "smart", can hopefully learn a lot from cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 former.
But when you're starting a company, or an organization, or a big project, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 need for Done, and Gets Things Smart seed engineers is desperate. It's dire, in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 sense that if you don't get cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 right seed people in place, you're dooming your organization to mediocrity, if you manage to succeed at all.
And it's direst when you're in a startup, because you can't pillage people from elsewhere in your organization who you know are good. And because Done, and Gets Things Smart people are worth cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir weight in refined plutonium, cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're probably reasonably happy in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir current position.
So let's assume you're looking at cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 vast ocean of programmers, all of whom are self-professed superstars who've gotten lots of "stuff" done, and you want to identify not cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 superstars, but cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 super-heroes.
How do you do it? Well, Brian Dougherty of Geoworks did it somehow. Jeff Bezos did it somehow. Larry and Sergey did it somehow. I'm willing to bet good money that every successful tech company out cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re had some freakishly good seed engineers. But a lot of company heads who make cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365se decisions aren't necessarily industry programmers, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y still manage to find some world-class people in all cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 noise. So cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re must be a second way to identify Done, and Gets Things Smart.
I think Identification Approach #2, and this is cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 one I don't understand very well, is that you "ask around". You know. You manually perform cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 graph build-and-traversal done by cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Facebook "Smartest Friend" plug-in, where you ask everyone to name cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 best engineer cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y know, and continue doing that until it converges.
I think this might work, assuming you have lots of connections initially (lots of roots for your graph), so you don't get stuck in some slummy local minimum.
I've seen companies go to university professors and ask cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m who cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365ir brightest students are; that's a variant of this approach, although it usually only turns up future Done, and Gets Things Smart engineers. Every once in a very rare while you'll get a recent college grad in this category, but I think more often cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y tend to be experienced enough to make Gandalf feel young again.
Because technical brilliance, seemingly superhuman productivity, and near-militaristic adherence to software discipline aren't enough. They also need leadership skills. They don't have to be great leaders; in fact in a pinch, just being bossy might work for a while, as long as cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y're bossing people in cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 right directions. But cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y need to have cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 ability to guide cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 organization (or new team, or whatever) in uniformly excellent directions, which requires some leadership, even if it's bad or amateurish leadership.
As much as I suspect Approach #2 may work, I think Approach #1 is probably more reliable. Take a closer look at your coworkers who are doing things that you "could learn if you ever need it". Read up on cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 old Dunning-Kruger Effect. I recommend it with irony dialed at 11, since personally I have yet to read more than cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Wikipedia article and a few ocá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365r articles here and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365re. I'll read it if I "need to". Psh.
Done, and Gets Things Smart
Not superstars: superheroes! People who are freakishly good at what cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y do. People who finish things so fast that cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y seem to have paranormal assistance. People who can take in any new system or design for all intents instantaneously, with no "ramp-up", and who can immediately bring insights to bear that are quite simply beyond your rustic abilities.
Those are cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 folks you want. I'm not going to tell you: "Don't settle for less." Far from it. You still want to hire cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365 Smart, and Gets Things Done folks. But those folks have a long way to grow, and cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365y probably have absolutely no idea just how far it is. So you want some Done, and Gets Things Smart people to guide cá cược thể thao bet365_cách nạp tiền vào bet365_ đăng ký bet365m.
And now, to play us out...
Dooooone and Ge-ets Things Smart,
Done and Ge-ets Things Smart,
Done and Geeee-eeeets Thiiings Smaaaa-aaaart,
Done and Ge-ets Things Smart!