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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

> Once in a while, though, I'd find someone exceptional who could approach problems differently, and those people would always turn out to be the best hires. They would have been filtered out by these systems.

This is the goal. When you’re a large org, you do not need exceptional people, you need foot soldiers who do what they’re told.

Yes even in engineering. Most of the day-to-day work boils down to JSON bureacracy and code archaelogy.

Remember: They pay so much because otherwise people wouldn’t stay.

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I think someone who can approach a problem differently and effectively, can also follow orders just fine.

I like to try new things and approach things differently, I don't do it with every task and recognize there is value in doing it the same old way at times too.

Way too many tests and etc assume that people can only do X, or Y or Z.

Oh totally. The problem is that folks like that often get bored by the job.

The number of stories I’ve heard of engineers having to microdose just to get through the day because working on 1 button for 6 months kills their spirit ...

+1 on 'Code Archeology'.

I wonder if interviews should consist more of reading a pile of open source and just trying to make sense of it.

There's some crusty open source I've had to deal with whereupon it took quite some intelligence just to get it to compile and work - absolutely nothing to do with 'algorithms'.

I'm half inclined to just say: "Here's a git repo, build it, modify this thing to do that" and if they can, they're gold.

We do this! For the coding portion, candidates get a crappy React app we slapped together in 20 minutes. They’re asked to add a feature.

Really tells you a lot about the candidate.

Authentic.

I'm not sure what language you work in the most, but based on the build issues I might guess c++, in which case I'd say check out conan central. It's still sad compared to other package managers, but if you're building c++ all day, it's a game changer.

https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index/tree/master/r...

Thanks for that - you guessed it - C++. It's like you think you speak English but then you walk into a pub in Pembrokeshire and you absolutely cannot understand a word anyone is saying, even though ostensibly they are speaking English. C++ will forever be a 'distant second language' that is different in every project. It's very frustrating.

> code archaelogy

I've never heard this phrase, but it's so apt to most of every dev job I've had. I love it.

Then you should read A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge!

Software archaeology in a mature programming environment http://akkartik.name/post/deepness

(An excerpt from A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge)

A colleague of mine teaches “Digital Archaeology” as a graduate course where students “mine” git repositories.

I wonder if the smaller companies that buy into this bullshit realize the talent they’re losing to save a few hours.

As a consultant to large orgs who was paid handsomely to fix the situation you describe, I can say that is exactly what they think, and also exactly wrong.

[edit] Many people in these orgs are doing exactly that. Having come in, diagnosed the ultimate crap that kept them on that 1 button for six months, helped give them the autonomy to do what was needed helped everyone involved, from the devs to the PMs to the division itself.

It's a common and insidious pattern, but even big companies benefit when it's broken.

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