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The rule of thumb is to understand before you decide you've understood.

Yeah, no.

The rule of thumb ought to be find your own path, go with what works for you and forget everyone else's establishments. Clearly this guy saw a job with a culture and environment that he got a good vibe from, he liked their approach, he liked their people, he chose them.

On the flip side, I personally don't know where this attitude comes from that the younger generations should have to toil and sweat and bleed before they get that opportunity engage in something that clicks with them. Life is short, but JUST long enough to get those experiences in whatever way they come along in our lives.

Personally, I'm just as sick of old curmudgeons coming along dictating to young people how they should run a career just because said old fogie had to go in a different direction just to get his in the world as you are with recent grad students and their "entitlement".

Personally, I'm just as sick of old curmudgeons coming along dictating to young people how they should run a career just because said old fogie had to go in a different direction just to get his in the world as you are with recent grad students and their "entitlement".

... and as an "old curmudgeon" who runs a small company and has been working in technology for nearly 15 years, I'm bemused and slightly weary of young graduates who seems to know everything and seem to have a very difficult time listening to senior engineers and managers when they're told differently.

The end result is that we have to be exceedingly careful to maintain a high ratio of senior to junior engineers, lest we be overwhelmed with individuals campaigning for some technology of the date -- be it NoSQL, switching the whole company to some new VCS, or otherwise -- instead of applying their experience to making carefully reasoned choices to actually getting the job done.

There is always room for change and innovation, but after you've been around long enough to see the cyclic trends in the re-invention of software technology, you become more conservative about spending resources leaping on hyperbole of "next big thing."

I think this reflects an attitude of the world that I disagree with. Youth does not imply ignorance; they can be naturally coupled together, but the automatic assumption from older managers and developers that "He's young, he doesn't know what he's doing" needs to die a horrible death in a house fire.

I'm sorry, you may disagree and that's your prerogative but I've worked with some incredibly intelligent, skilled, and forward thinking individuals who some "curmudgeons" might think are just inexperienced buffoons who defied the status quo and in a few cases have actually managed to save their department thousands of dollars.

Youth is vitality, youth is energy, youth is a fresh perspective.

Sometimes that birdcage NEEDS to be rattled.

It's like Wayne Gretzky said, "I missed 100% of the shots I didn't take"

Exactly, Wayne.

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

It is interesting, I didn't read in his post that nupark2 said youth implies ignorance. But that is probably because you'd classify me as an old "curmudgeon" too.

I totally agree that vitality, energy and fresh perspectives are important, but I have also been exposed to them being applied to the totally wrong thing. But I don't think that is an age thing really. I have experienced buffoons at every level of an organisation and at every age. I try to mix young and old, experience and fresh perspectives, energy and caution in my teams. Balance tends to work out well.

Wayne Gretzky's risk for missing a shot was ... nothing. It cost him nothing to miss. So of course it was rational to take every possible shot.

Curmudgeons have memories of shots taken that had high, probably still extant, negative side-effects. That's why they're cautious.

Good examples. I was the junior at my company championing a new VCS for the entire company (5 years ago), and more recently even NoSQL (2 years ago) for almost everything.

Fortunately, people change.

I don't know about others, but it took me the better part of 8 years of post-school professional experience to finally realize my immaturity and arrogance.

>On the flip side, I personally don't know where this attitude comes from that the younger generations should have to toil and sweat and bleed before they get that opportunity engage in something that clicks with them.

It's that whole "paying your dues" mentality, isn't it? Which might be fine, if we weren't all participating in an industry where a well executed idea can turn things upside down.

Not toil and sweat but as a fresh graduate do you really have enough experience to make decision about culture? And that too based only on a couple of interviewers?

Not working on windows because you don't agree with its design philosophies is ridiculous. It's not that you are working on building windows. It's just a platform. You select the tool that works best to get the job done. Not because you agree with the tools philosophy.

If I got such a letter I'd actually retract offer to this candidate. Flexibility and eagerness to take on challenges and learn goes a long way in your initial days as a developer. Lacking these qualities is a big no-go for me at least.

I've been working in this industry for a while, and I've never regretted my decision to pretty much be a Linux-only guy. You can't do everything, and I like working with tools that are pleasing to me. I felt that way when I started working and I feel that way now.

Sure, I probably lose out on some jobs because I'm not a Windows guy, but I'm also not an Oracle guy or a SAP guy or a Cobol guy or a Fortran guy either. It's a big field, and there's lots of room. As of late, I've found that even here in Italy there are plenty of Rails jobs, so, despite knowing it, I've also made a decision to not be a "PHP guy" either.

So I don't think that sort of choice is merely lack of experience.

I think the only reason for worry is if someone decides they're an XYZ guy, and that's all they do. I've used many languages professionally, and find learning new ones fun. I have more time for that if I spend less screwing around with things I don't like.

Absolutely. When I interviewed for my current job one of the interviewers walked in, looked at my resume and said "Wow a resume with no Windows on it. Nice."

Not that I'm bashing the Microsoft stack mind you, it just doesn't interest me. I'd do it to pay the bills if I had to but there's enough depth in the industry that, as you say, I'm not terribly worried by not knowing everything.

> I think the only reason for worry is if someone decides they're an XYZ guy, and that's all they do.

That's exactly I will retract offer to this guy if I ever got such a letter. I don't really object his position to not program on a specific platform. It's themindset.

Flexibility and eagerness to take on challenges and learn goes a long way in your initial days as a developer.

But don't forget the maxim that you are what you repeatedly do (and other people will give you more of the work you have demonstrated enthusiasm and ability with). If you accept to be flexible and take on challenges means you take on the Perl/CGI company website with the flat-file back-end feeding the 3rd party ActiveX display, you will become skilled at dealing with Perl/CGI, fakeabases and ActiveX.

What you do shapes your future, and it's quite reasonable to say "I choose not to head towards that kind of life, because I dislike X philosophy" - you may be misinformed about X, but it's not a "ridiculous" position to take unless you are struggling for money or alternative options.

as a fresh graduate do you really have enough experience to make decision about culture?

That's not really a valid question - you can't fault inexperienced people for making decisions without experience, that's circular.

If you are asked to do perl, fakebases nad activeX in your early days and enjoy it. That's fine. If you don't like it you can always reject the next assignemtn .But you have rejected after knowing that you did it and you didn't like it.

That lad, has probably not even worked on say Windows. Its premature to reject that platform based only on "design principles" it follows

>>as a fresh graduate do you really have enough experience to make decision about culture?

>That's not really a valid question - you can't fault inexperienced people for making decisions without experience, that's circular.

You are generalizing my statement. I am specifically referring to judging culture. You can't even figure out let alone make judgements based on that if you are fresh out of college because you have barely seen any corporate culture by that time.

>Flexibility and eagerness to take on challenges and learn

You are right in principle, but to you these things mean "compromising on what I want to do to please the corp", Eagerness means "I don't care whether I do something that I want, I will be happy to do whether they will let me", learning means "Accepting the decree I am given as the right thing".

All of these are horrible, grotesque deformations which caries just enough of the original truth to work as sound-bites but will wreak the life of those who labor under them.

I'm late to this discussion but I'm a bit appalled that no one has cited pg's Great Hacker's essay, which makes nearly the same point on platforms (it's a little stronger in that it was talking about delivery platforms as well): http://paulgraham.com/gh.html

Windows with an X server to the machine I'm actually doing the work on is just fine (there are still some important things that run best on Windows), but any company that otherwise chooses Windows as a software development platform is saying a whole lot about themselves and pretty much nothing good.

The article does not rip on Windows. It implies that OS / language choice says something about an organization's developer culture. I share this belief, and it would be an important job criteria for me as well.

Consider three choices: (1) Big company X on Windows + .Net, (2) Big Company Y on Linux + C++, or (3) co-founding a new startup using whatever I prefer. I wouldn't fault anyone for having pre-conceived notions about the cultures prominent at these companies, would you?

I agree, but I think writing that in a long email where you bold that sentence is pretty condescending. I think that's the main issue people are taking with it. If you want to engage in a discussion about cultures and platforms, I think that's a valid discussion, but this email was not the place to do it.

Actually considering he was asked WHY he didn't choose them it was the perfect place for it. The fact that he bolded that line only served to highlight his real and only true objection --- the development environment. Everything else he addressed was secondary and he would have probably taken the job even with all those other points. After the interview it really doesn't matter much what the interviewing process was like, but the development environment is something that will be with him everyday.

His whole email could have been summed up as "you're on Windows, I don't do Windows". That's not condescending, that's his preference and HIS reason for not taking the job.

The fact that he bolded that line only served to highlight his real and only true objection

Maybe. "Rather, the same initial rejection would occur, for the same reasons; and the search for justification, afterward, would terminate at a different stopping point. [..] This might be an important thing for young businesses and new-minted consultants to keep in mind - that what your failed prospects tell you is the reason for rejection, may not make the real difference;" - http://lesswrong.com/lw/wj/is_that_your_true_rejection/

I don't believe this is particularly relevant, at least on the part of the OP.

"It may seem arbitrary, but the platform an organization uses is indicative to me of a whole lot."

What is he supposed to add here to avoid condescension? He was asked a question, this belief drives the answer. He admits his opinions might not be fully formed ("seem arbitrary"), and claims no general truth for his opinion ("indicative to me", rather than just indicative). And he's giving his basis for preferring Unix, rather than a vague "I don't like Windows". He's actually not negative about Windows at all!

Yes, I would.

Why?

What's great about the programming industry is that demand for good programmers is higher than the supply of good programmers, so if you're a good programmer people have no choice but to make you feel special for liking Emacs and Common Lisp. If you don't want to work for a Windows shop simply because you hate the default desktop background, that's their problem and not yours. You have a job, they don't have a developer. You win, they lose.

That's what's great about being a person instead of a computer program. You don't have to be rational!

Except that this isn't true. Look, despite what we do all day at first glance, no-one gets paid to "write programs". You get paid to solve other people's problems, it just happens to be with code - it doesn't matter how hardcore you are, that's what you do. The guys working on compilers are solving the problems of the guys who need optimized code, and they're solving the problems of people who want to simulate cars in wind tunnels (or whatever) and they're solving the problems of people who want to save fuel... And so it goes.

Part of actually doing that is that you have to be able to work with a team, and you have to write code that anyone in the team can pick up, and the organization has to be comfortable that if you get hit by a bus (or throw a strop over emacs vs vi) they can get someone to build on what you've done on behalf if their customers. Sure Emacs and Lisp are great - but are they the right tool for every problem? Of course not.

This is what we mean when we say new grads have no experience. Sure you might have written a load of code, but it's the "solving other people's problems" bit that is true experience. By all means be a prima donna - but remember that real artists ship.

> By all means be a prima donna - but remember that real artists ship.

Spot on. And, if I can add another aphorism, real programmers finish what they start.

On the other hand, for a while it seemed that more often than not an idealistic stand against Windows was the only viable type, and I daresay we're all better off for those who took it.

I've been using Linux since I started developing professionally, in 1997, and for the things I've worked on (mostly the web), it's always been a valid alternative.

Sure, for some things. But it wasn't a valid alternative before a bunch of people decided to spend an awful lot of time making it, despite the unlikeliness of it ever being a real competitor to DOS.

And years before that even, the GNU project was powered almost entirely by idealists (albeit the kind of idealists who actually ship code). Rewriting Unix from scratch for free? That sure sounded crazy at the time.

Without a doubt. I was just saying that it's been a fairly viable system for a while.

I moved over from Windows to Linux in mid 2003. For me, it has not only been a valid alternative, but a superior one.

I wasn't aware that acting on preferences and then articulating them when prompted counts as a sense of entitlement.

You must get angry a lot.

"In retrospect, this was a sign of immaturity and self-aggrandizing."

Or maybe it's your current self-aggrandizing now that you were given a smidgen of power.