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Comment by kindfellow92 | Hacker News Reader

> But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that.

Jesus, no. Sounds like a non-self-aware egomaniac. Google’s culture is very non-ego-driven, academic and meritocratic. This guy would have spontaneously combusted after the first month.

Also personally I would hate working with a self-described dick who couldn’t invert a binary tree who also was super confident they made “really good things.” Just no.

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“No brilliant jerks” is an explicit filter at my employer. This is not evenly applied but it is applied

Yeah after enough projects and jobs, I think the morale and productivity cost of having people with whom are difficult to work is too high. Jerks breed resentment and destroy the motivation of others. Companies are about large organized groups of people accomplishing a goal larger than any given individual could accomplish by themself. Individuals who can’t cooperate with others are literally destroying a core aspect of any company.

Whilst I don't doubt that having the knowledge of an actual compsci education is valuable, because you're supposed to be able to build more than one product (and build it correctly), I don't think we should quote "really good things". Homebrew is quite popular and for the short time I used MacOS, I did like it, perhaps not as much as Linux package managers but better than anything Windows had to offer at that time.

Being smart and writing beautifully architectured software is also not something that sells. What sells is software people actually want to use. I often find myself focussing too much on the first part of getting a nice architecture, and in general writing nice code. But the UI/UX is the first thing people interact with and if that part is bad, the rest doesn't even matter anymore.

I realize this is not the case in every industry, but it's not something we can just consider 'worthless'. Homebrew does a fine job (as far as I could tell) of providing a decent user experience. Even if the internals would be pure spaghetti.

That said, I do think that at google you'd look for a balance of both, and they thought he didn't have enough knowledge about the underlying theory, which is a fine reason not to hire someone.

> Being smart and writing beautifully architectured software is also not something that sells.

Seeing how many people that use google products on a daily basis, I think you are mistaken.

> What sells is software people actually want to use.

Looking at app stores such as Steam, they sell a lot of software which is actually never used. So what sells is software that people want to buy. The using part is optional. Source: "Right now, I can tell you that about 37 percent of the roughly 781 million games registered to various Steam accounts haven’t even been loaded a single time." https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gau...

> Seeing how many people that use google products on a daily basis, I think you are mistaken.

I did add that I think google looks for a balance and was right not to hire him. I understand that their requirements are different from a lot of other companies. You probably overlooked that part and it might have seemed as if I thought it was unimportant at google, which I assure you is not the case. :-)

The second part is indeed a good point, there's a subtle difference and you are correct indeed!

> What sells is software people actually want to use.

That's one part of it and mostly b2c. The other part is well marketed software people have to use. Majority of people aren't exited about using office. Nobody wants to use windows. There may be a single lunatic who's excited about using an accounting package. Yet, more copies will be sold every day. And once they're established, their UI/UX can break in any possible way. The app sales won't slow down - training sales will go up.

> Being smart and writing beautifully architectured software is also not something that sells. What sells is software people actually want to use. I often find myself focussing too much on the first part of getting a nice architecture, and in general writing nice code. But the UI/UX is the first thing people interact with and if that part is bad, the rest doesn't even matter anymore.

It always baffles me that software engineers fail to understand that. The same people that doesn't do the same thing in other fields/products which is not related to software.

He called himself a dick. That's about as self-aware as you can get.

Hehe maybe you’re right but it’s not self-aware to think that calling yourself a dick makes it okay. Instead he should just not be a dick.

Maybe he's just being realistic? It's exhausting how people having their own opinions are labelled dicks lately, and conformist sheeple are called "good team players". Good teams need people who dare to disagree and question the status quo, because that validates internal ideas, making the results stronger, better implemented, more creative.

Meh, it’s possible to challenge the status quo without being a dick. I think it’s more sincere to not be a dick.

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