July 25, 2005
Hitting the High Notes
"Five Antonio Salieris won't produce Mozart's Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for 100 years."
-- Joel Spolsky
Sweet Jesus, Joel has written a great article!
Posted by Josh Staiger at 11:01 PM
Comments
Posted by: didier July 27, 2005 12:04 AM | Permanent link
he seems to suggest that you're either born w/ programming genes or you're not.
While I personally subscribe to the concept of the programming gene, I don't see what this has to do with Joel's article.
Joel talks about hiring the best, most creative people to produce the best, most creative software. He says nothing about what nature or nurture have to do with the mix.
And his little graph has a flaw: microsoft. MS has a lot of good programmers, yet it sucks.
Two things...
Firstly, in any large company it is hard to hire a critical mass of great engineers without the mean dragging down the rock stars. I'd put money on the fact that the average programmer at Fog Creek Software is *much* better than the average programmer at Microsoft.
Secondly, Microsoft is a company run by marketing execs, not by engineers. So in a sense, it doesn't really matter what kind of engineers they hire because the marketing execs dictate that the engineers work on shitty things like "embrace and extend." (Conversely, look to Google for an example of a large company that is still run by engineers).
Posted by: Josh Staiger July 27, 2005 05:38 AM | Permanent link
The general impression that I got from him is that there are good and bad programmers and that they stay the same. But you're right, his main point still stands.
"I'd put money on the fact that the average programmer at Fog Creek Software is *much* better than the average programmer at Microsoft. "
Are you saying that if you pick at random any programmer in Fog Creek, he's going to be better than any programmer, picked at random in MS? Considering they are of different sizes, this random sampling would be unfair to MS.
"Secondly, Microsoft is a company run by marketing execs, not by engineers"
So it's more than simple than hiring the best people for the job, isn't it? That's what I wanted to point out.
Posted by: didier July 27, 2005 02:11 PM | Permanent link
I don't know, he seems to suggest that you're either born w/ programming genes or you're not. I'm not, so I might be partial ;) .
It's not all or nothing, it's not 0 or 1; his argument is quite reductionist.
And his little graph has a flaw: microsoft. MS has a lot of good programmers, yet it sucks.
I like her response too: http://egrigg9000.com/mtpub/archives/000403.html