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From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
To: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
Cc: COFF <coff@tuhs.org>
Subject: [COFF] Re: [TUHS] Interview question
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2023 08:06:42 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20230104160642.GF25689@mcvoy.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W5eFpny47SwPRkAFqAXXiHhHPJN=pk7-M_rY4EfY2XK2w@mail.gmail.com>

I think people are bike shedding this so I'm gonna let it go.  What 
worked for me might not work for you, so be it.  You guys have fun.

On Wed, Jan 04, 2023 at 10:42:03AM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2023 at 10:06 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > Bakul gets it.  "Entirely by you" does not mean "go get some sand
> > because you need to make some silicon ..."
> >
> > "Entirely by you" means given a set of tools, show me what you did.
> > Just you.  Not your team, just you.
> 
> Hmm. I've worked on projects where all code had to be reviewed prior
> to submission into a shared repository (though there was a carve-out
> for a little experimental area). In that context, how does one define
> "just you"?
> 
> > It's not an arbitrary question, Warner, it's giving people have done
> > it a chance to say so.  And weeding out the people who haven't.
> >
> > Which is not a great way to sort people in general, it was a great
> > way to sort people for my 12 person company.  We needed people who
> > could do that, we were too small for people who couldn't.
> 
> It seems to me that the outcome is more important than the specifics
> of this exercise. Reading between the lines, it sounds like you were
> using this as a proxy for whether someone can come in and start
> contributing largely unguided and without a lot of handholding, and
> drive something to completion without a lot of external help. That's
> all well and good, but I don't know if this is the best way to assess
> that; as worded, it sounds mostly like you're asking if someone has
> built some tool explicitly used by (at least?) a few other people, but
> some people make much bigger contributions with much higher impact in
> very complex systems without ever doing that.
> 
> I think Warner's point is sound: you're building something within a
> framework/system/design/whatever that's been shaped by many others
> before you; what is the meaning of an individual contribution in that
> sense? In some sense, I've written software used by billions of
> people, but they would never know that. I remember when my late mother
> called me once and said, "I saw that Google was in the news for doing
> <something>, was that you?" and I replied, "mom, if you ever hear
> about anything that I did at Google in the news, then I messed up very
> badly and I'm really in a lot of trouble and probably looking for a
> new job." "Oh," my crestfallen mother said, "I told my friends you
> worked on that." "Sorry, ma." Internally, I might have built something
> or changed something used by tens of thousands of engineers,
> well-documented, etc, but again, most wouldn't think about it that
> way; most of them wouldn't even know. Warner's example of working
> inside the FreeBSD kernel similarly: that's used in all kinds of
> places by many, many people, but most don't give a second thought to
> wondering how it works.
> 
> > And Bakul, yes, I asked a lot of other questions.  The only other one that
> > came up repeatedly was the "Safeway question".  What's that?  If you saw
> > a coworker at the store, do you go talk to them or do you hide in another
> > aisle and hope they don't see you?  There is your hire/don't hire answer.
> 
> Ha! Which is the right answer? :-)
> 
> Seriously, though, this seems highly contextually dependent: I see
> folks I now around town not infrequently, and I generally smile and
> nod or say hello if I catch their eye, but if they look like they're
> in a rush or are shepherding a couple of screaming kids, I'm not going
> to bother them.
> 
> > Bill Moore's question was "If we need you to, will you sweep the floors?"
> 
> This better be well contextualized. Does this mean, "we're a small
> organization and everyone needs to be willing to pitch in as needed?"
> or does it mean, "are you willing to prostrate yourself before the
> altar of this organization in order to prove yourself?" If the former,
> sure. If the latter, then no: sorry, I've done my time in more ways
> than one, including literally sweeping and mopping the floors (and
> cleaning the head) in the Marines. There's a tendency in technology to
> basically haze the friendly new guy; I'm done with that.
> 
>         - Dan C.

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

  parent reply	other threads:[~2023-01-04 16:07 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <20230102203646.GT25547@mcvoy.com>
2023-01-02 21:13 ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-03  2:58   ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-03  6:06     ` Dave Horsfall
2023-01-03  6:16     ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-03 15:57     ` Warner Losh
2023-01-03 19:53       ` segaloco via COFF
2023-01-04  2:44       ` Bakul Shah
2023-01-04  3:06         ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-04 15:42           ` Dan Cross
2023-01-04 16:00             ` Warner Losh
2023-01-04 16:52               ` Dan Cross
2023-01-04 17:51               ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-04 16:06             ` Larry McVoy [this message]
2023-01-04 16:58               ` segaloco via COFF

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