[blhack]

Excuse me? My hacker friends and I have all discussed this at length and agreed that the largest motivator for us is working on hard problems.

This is how some of us justify working for the military; they offer really tough problems to solve.

Twitter is the same; if twitter offered me a job, I would practically move to the bay and live out of my jeep to do it.

[shadowmatter]

I think there's a faction of engineers who want to work on interesting (which can be hard) problems, and those who want to work on interesting products.

I believe this is demonstrated clearly by the jobs pages for both Apple and Google. From Apple:

* Every detail matters… It matters all of the time. That’s how we do things at Apple. The result is some of the best-loved products in the world.

* Simplicity isn’t simple... It means rethinking every customer experience until the clutter has fallen away — until all that remains is what’s essential, useful, and beautiful. That might be a new product feature that delights even die-hard fans.

From Google, specifically an interview with Google employees about work there:

* ”... love to work on challenging projects”

* ”... love being faced with problems that were not ever solved before”

* ”... you hear people talking about algorithms and coding and programming languages”

* ”... it was just a pleasure being interviewed by smart people and being given a lot of puzzling questions”

I discussed this in a blog post I wrote which you can find here: http://mgp.github.com/2012/02/13/problems-and-products.html

I used to work at Google, and I joined there during a period when I wanted to work on interesting (i.e. hard) problems. I left to work on interesting products.

[potatolicious]

> "I think there's a faction of engineers who want to work on interesting (which can be hard) problems, and those who want to work on interesting products."

In my experience this only describes 10% of the programmer population. The rest don't really want either, they just like the benefits and the paycheck.

They also don't work at Twitter, Google, or Apple, not many do anyhow.

Actually, I don't think the distinction really exists. Some people like to crack hard algorithmic problems, some people like to crack hard systems problems, others like to crack hard markets, or hard product verticals. It's all part of the same thing - people like to accomplish things that are hard to do and interesting to try.

[shadowmatter]

Agree that this only matters to 10% of the population. And yes, I'm totally oversimplifying it by creating only two categories. As to whether the distinction really exists, I personally believe that it does -- and the best anecdote I have is looking back on my reasons to leave Google. When I joined I wanted to work on hard/interesting problems, and when I left I wanted to work on interesting/impactful products.

[akkartik]

I'll agree to disagree on 'largest'[1]. But there's a huge difference between 'largest' and 'only'. Which is what grandparent implied.

[1] I lied. I can't sell you a bridge because I suck at it. But somebody will. To you and your friends. Let's talk again in 10 years. Sigh, when did I get so cynical? Then again, it's not cynical to see the feedback loops between who you work with and what you work on and the million other seemingly minor details that go into liking what you do. Yeah, maybe I'm ok. The comparison to suckers is entirely unfair; for that I apologize. It's just the circle of life.

[ececconi]

The toughest problem that they need to learn how to solve is how to make that $$.

[lovskogen]

Which hard problem at Twitter would you love to work on?