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Comment by overgard | Hacker News Reader

His thing about reading too much into references is pretty bad. Like "moody" = "clinically depressed." Pretty big jump there! Could you really say that about a stranger based on a tepid reference? Maybe their project was stupid, or they had a bad seating arrangement where they were stuck next to an annoyingly chatty person, or they just weren't naturally bubbly, or ... whatever, there's like a thousand possible reasons to consider before you jump to "clinically depressed" with regard to a stranger.

I also think the thing about drive is a bit naive. If you're dealing with a young unknown quantity than sure, drive can be a useful metric, but on the other hand if you're dealing with a proven reliable professional with domain expertise, who cares if they have drive? I've worked with plenty of really good people that don't want to touch a computer after they go home, and yet are incredibly capable at their jobs, and that's totally fine.

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Similar to that, when he mentioned constantly interrupting = egomaniac. I've noticed that I'm fairly bad about interrupting people, but I don't think it's because I feel I'm way better than everyone else and my opinion is so important, but that's what my parents and some of my close friends do as well. When I do it with people besides them, I usually stop myself and maybe apologize, but by then it's too late.

I know I must be annoying, but surely that doesn't mean I'm a bad developer.

I just had to deal with someone like this for six months - he always interrupted people, always thought he knew everything, was a terrible coder but thought he was great. However, he stressed multiple times that he never regarded himself as better than everyone else. His actions said otherwise, and pissed off the team (especially me).

You might be an egomaniac, or you might not. It's impossible to tell from one comment, because you've only mentioned a subset of the behaviours, and egomaniacs don't always have the self-awareness to judge their own behaviour.

If you listen and engage with your peers about programming, and not just dismiss everyone else's opinion outright, then you're probably not an egomaniac.

To be fair, even if you were an egomaniac or thought you were better than anyone else, that doesn't mean you're a bad developer. There are obviously cases where egomaniacs are great developers. Linus Torvalds being exhibit #1. Not defending the practice of thinking you're better than others. Just saying that it's not simply binary.

Interrupters are people who don't listen to what others are saying. Playing nice with others is usually is required to be a good developer (depending on what you're working on, software is rarely a solo effort).

Not only that, you can learn something from other people as you don't know everything all the time. Constantly learning is required to be a good developer. You can't learn when you interrupt.

I worked with an interrupter, he was one of the most incompetent programmers I've ever seen but wasn't capable of understanding his own incompetence because he was too busy interrupting others.

> Interrupters are people who don't listen to what others are saying

In contrast; I listen to people intently, and love learning new ideas and opinions. However, most people take sooo long to get to the point that I often know how their sentences will end before they do. So I interrupt them.

Some people get offended, and insist on finishing their sentences. In about 99% of the cases, I correctly predicted their point.

I feel the same way. And I would like to imagine that I wouldn't be too bothered if someone cut me off and quickly expressed how we were 'on the same page'.

Theres a difference between finishing someone's sentence in a back-and-fourth conversation and interrupting.

It's a culture thing. The trick is to keep from disrupting the conversation flow. - Some natural languages outside of English are meant to interrupt the speaker. A community with a mind is less worried about finishing a thought vs an individual who wants to be heard by the community. - Who ever convinced you you are annoying is just pushing their ideology onto you and you're allowing it to affect you.

Do you have any pointers to where I could read more about natural languages being meant to interrupt the speaker? That sounds fascinating.

I interpreted that passage as that he had once gotten a review of someone as "moody" and it turned out they were actually clinically depressed, and similarly with the other reviews.

Not much better to extrapolate from one data point than from zero, though!

Yeah, I share your concern on drive. People who are incredibly driven are surely going in some direction, but it's not clear to me that it's always the right one, and I've often seen them drive in a direction that is different than where the team is going or what the company needs.

The (admittedly unstated) context here is that you're not just hiring someone competent for a job, you're hiring an early employee for a startup. The employee will have a massive influence on the company's future. They will not only be doing the job, they will be defining the job.

(Edit: The table of contents lists this under "other startup essentials.")

Yeah, I prefer vision and ability to deliver over some person's belief in your perceived drive. Its a very simple con to make someone think you are determined, its much harder to con results.

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