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Comment by adaml_623 | Hacker News Reader

You're essentially saying since you're doing simple things you'd prefer to hire an ignorant programmer who doesn't understand anything more than what you think the job requires.

Well heaven help you if your application gets more complicated and you need to figure out something more difficult.

A truly good programmer knows all the tricks and knows when to not use them.

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And pay will scale accordingly. Software development is a balancing act.

If all pay were equal, yes, I'd want her, with the ability to keep her code simple and never be tempted to use complicated things where they don't belong. I'd also want her to understand everything down to the logic gates, and be able to write her own operating system and VM from scratch. If she could also make the perfect waffle, that would be desirable, too.

But pay isn't equal, and I'd be a fool to pay for more than I really need. (Assuming I'm paying fairly.) If the project gets more complicated, I'll educate or hire accordingly. In fact, by that time, he may have educated himself up to the level I need.

The level of the inequality in pay is at most a factor of 2. I am so, so confident that the woman in those slides will be more than twice as productive, on a range of metrics, than the man. There's a big difference between being competent and being an expert. (In addition, her knowledge about the details of C is good evidence that she's probably going to be more knowledgeable about other things related to the job, too.)

Actually, I believe the oft-quoted factor is 10x productivity when dealing with someone at this skill level (and from what I've seen in the field, I'd believe it). But that implies good architectural sense, which I'd test for before making a final decision.

Barring any serious deficiencies, she'd be a steal at 2x pay.

I think the 10x number is inflated, but one thing I realized more recently is it doesn't matter! If you can get a programmer that is 50% (1.5x) as productive for 2x as much, it's almost certainly worth it, since you are unlikely to get even 50% more productivity by hiring twice as many people (which is the alternative).

Not trying to do anything more than make a side comment, but:

> If she could also make the perfect waffle, that would be desirable, too.

is the sort of casual sexism that I'd love to see less of.

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