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Comment by uDontKnowMe | Hacker News Reader

No, I think they're looking for people who are intrinsically motivated by the drive to do a professional job applying their craft, rather than to use a project as an opportunity to experiment with technology that they want to learn for their own curiosity or career trajectory.

In the same way, when you hire a contractor build you a garage, you look for someone who will use their experience to build a good garage with the best materials and techniques keeping in mind the priorities of the owner, like maintainance, cost, appearance, resalability, etc. You don't want someone showing up who just views your garage primarily as an opportunity to learn about this new construction material they've heard about that doesn't help you.

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> No, I think they're looking for people who are intrinsically motivated by the drive to do a professional job applying their craft, rather than to use a project as an opportunity to experiment with technology that they want to learn for their own curiosity or career trajectory.

A desire to learn is not a desire to experiment.

> In the same way, when you hire a contractor build you a garage, you look for someone who will use their experience to build a good garage with the best materials and techniques keeping in mind the priorities of the owner, like maintainance, cost, appearance, resalability, etc.

Meatspace contractors try new techniques all the time. You're paying for the ability to accommodate a client, not the ability to do the exact same thing repeatedly.

So do you ask your contractor what keeps him passionate about garages?

Not the OP, but I'd like it if my contractor shows at least a bit of professional engagement.

I'm hiring them because they're the expert - and if they ask some questions about why I want the garage and what I plan to use it for, it'll help them deliver a final product that's a better fit for my needs.

For example, if I say "I want a garage that's 200 square feet and has an epoxy-covered floor", I'd like it if my contractor asked me some questions and came back with responses like "Since you want to do x in your garage, I'd avoid the epoxy floor and go with painted concrete. Also, I've has several clients who were interested in doing x and they ended up wanting a storage loft in the garage. You can add one later if you'd like, but it's much less expensive if you add it during initial construction."

So...maybe not passionate, exactly. But engaged and professional, absolutely.

I'd like for my contractor to suggest garage designs that aren't decades old, insecure, unmaintainable, to know what're the modern garage tools...

There are buildings that have stood for hundreds of years, meanwhile you have to re-paint your own house every 10 year... new/modern is not always better.

How do you reconcile how bespoke and ever changing the requirements are for software products vs how stable the requirements are for garages?

I'm asking because I see the construction analogy pop up a lot and I just can't reconcile the two things.

To me the development of a new blueprint for a new kind of garage for a new kind of vehicle operated by a never before seen alien species is a bit closer to creating a software product.

I mean, who would ask a contractor to do what people regularly ask software engineering teams to do?

Construction isn't a bad analogy. Imagine you're a contractor getting called in to finish a house that some incompetent jabroni started, then got out of their depth and got fired midway. Meanwhile the homeowner has changed their mind and wants an open-concept kitchen, and the building inspector has come back with objections to the wiring plan that need to be rectified.

The physical dependencies of a house vs the abstract nature of software interdependencies really makes the analogy fail for me. Houses just don't don't regularly fall down 8 times a day because one framer is putting a nail in a new wall and that caused the fireplace to explode.

You should care about how much you pay the contractor and the quality of work you get in response. That's your only contract with them. Same for a developer.

> You don't want someone showing up who just views your garage primarily as an opportunity to learn about this new construction material they've heard about that doesn't help you.

That's a terrible analogy. Most of the time developers aren't writing greenfield projects, meaning they don't choose the stack. Devs have the leverage to choose by accepting jobs that use the stack we know (or want to know).

As to contractors, if you had already started building a garage with a new construction material, you probably would really want to hire people who were experienced in it. If you couldn't find them, you might want people who were interested in learning to use it.

If you want passion and motivation, consider hiring an actor or prostitute. I'm going to stick with my usual plan of "write good code in exchange for good money".

One gets more than just money from work. Or one can get more. Friendship, community (however fleeting), challange, growth. If you over index on comp you may miss out on more fuzzy aspects. You are there 6+ hours a day might as well optimize more broadly.

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