[GFischer]

"you know what’s even more rare? A guy who can write excellent code in several disparate languages, manage multiple different server installs, administrate databases, and configure office firewalls."

Is that really so hard to find? I might be selling myself short... (I actually thought I'm worth less on the marketplace by being a "generalist")

[jblow]

What is described is something toward the top end of basic competence. The only reason someone would think this is crazy is if they have been hanging around bad engineers and / or administrators. That said, most engineers / administrators are pretty mediocre, especially these days now that so many more people are doing it. So.

I mean, if "managing office firewalls" is on someone's list of things that are impressive, maybe that person does not have a clear view of the problem space.

But I should not even be giving the article so much attention as this. It's clear the author is confused. At first he talks about how rare and crazy it is to find someone who can do this, but then, contradictorily, he laments that PA will get tons of applicants who can do the job. Well, guy, which is it? They can't both be true.

All that is going on here is that someone had a negative reaction to the job posting and is trying to express and rationalize their reaction, regardless of how that rationalization really matches up to reality. Happens all the time, why am I even replying?

[jblow]

Really I guess the reason I am replying is that I am disturbed by this repeatedly-brought-up notion that highly productive people do not exist. I am not sure why it disturbs me so much, I think maybe because if potential highly-productive people read these things and believe them, they may be demotivated from reaching their potential. Maybe, I don't know.

If you don't believe that highly-productive programmers exist, it is only because you haven't yet met one.

[jere]

>they may be demotivated from reaching their potential.

Surely you don't think the potential of these highly productive programmers is to spend their days doing general IT, working on call 24/7, and being compensated with below market salary and benefits?

[jblow]

Well, I don't know that I would recommend this particular job. But I do know that the time I learned the most, and became a truly good programmer, was just a couple of years after college, when I worked my ass off doing very hard things that were initially beyond my ability. It was a company I started with a friend from college, and ultimately the company failed, but it was a tremendous learning experience.

Programming skill, at least, is like compound interest. The more you program, the better you will be in the future, which means you will learn faster in the future, etc. At a big company or in an undemanding situation, your pace of learning is pretty slow, being limited by the circumstances around you; and like any compound interest, if you get behind, it becomes pretty hard to catch up to where you would have been.

Whereas in a small-company situation or any situation where you are limited only by what you are physically and mentally capable of doing, you are learning as fast as possible. It is very good.

You could say that the Penny Arcade job is not as good as starting your own startup and working that hard, and maybe that is true; but my company shut down and left me $100k in debt (back in 2000 when $100k was real money!) whereas when you get paid, you are not taking the same risk. Maybe this also means it is psychologically difficult to work as hard. I don't know.

[asdasf]

Differing expectations doesn't mean one set of expectations is wrong. If someone claims they can do database administration, and then I ask them a basic question like what indexes would you need to create for an example query, and they have no idea, they are not capable of database administration. They mean "I can type apt-get install mysql-server" when they say they can admin databases.

[jblow]

I would say that said applicant is very clearly wrong.

Sure, there are a lot of people out there who exaggerate on their resume, but this has nothing to do with the existence of people who actually do know things.

[asdasf]

I would say they are wrong too. But the PA ad is almost certainly looking for exactly that level of skill, while using words that sound like they are looking for someone who actually knows what they are doing. So when the guy writes a response to it acting like their requirements are absurd, he isn't crazy, he is just getting a different mental picture of the requirements than the PA people had in their head when they wrote it.

[PeterisP]

Well, but any competent software developer who works with databases can (and often does) build database structures, indexing, query optimization, etc. A specialized DBA can do it better and much more, but the database needs for a small company often can easily be met by the 'side-skills' of someone who is primarily a programmer.

[asdasf]

I have literally never seen a single "competent software developer" who understands indexing or query optimization at all. All I see is spray and pray style indexing (create indexes semi-randomly until things seem fast enough).

[zanny]

They don't mention time requirements. While I have independently done all those things mentioned, nobody can do them all at average joe 40 hour a week level combined without having absurd burnout quickly or dying from sleep deprivation.

And even then, you aren't working at average levels, you would be far below it due to overexertion.

You can't have one guy write the website, maintain the servers, support the office IT, act as tech support, and manage all the site databases. Not on something as big as PA, at least. Maybe on a site with 100k views a month, where the server is just an ECS2 instance and your office firewall is a dlink router with iptables.

[saraid216]

Most tech companies have an entire engineering department with sub-divisions in order to get each of these roles done.

If you can fulfill four jobs by yourself, then you should be getting paid for four jobs. In Seattle terms, that should be north of 200k annual.

[yarou]

And yet, you'll find that the position probably pays less than even 1/4 of the value generated. Labor hasn't evolved much since the days of the robber barons. Employment should be a contract between equals, not an instrument of subservience. Unfortunately, the meme of exploitative employment reigns supreme today, globally.

[andrewingram]

There's a difference between being able to do 4 jobs well, and being able to do 4 jobs well at the same time. I can design and code, but I rarely attempt to do both on the same day, because context switching is hard work.

[jmccree]

It's hard enough to find someone who can write excellent code in one language. If you can also manage servers, do DBA work, and configure firewalls/networking equipment, you are actually very valuable to the right team/client.

[pseut]

It's "excellent code," not "self-perceived excellent code" or "good code."

[GFischer]

Good point :) . Yeah, I'm definitely not in the "excellent code" category (more like "it works" category for most languages).

[mcv]

It might be hard to find for the money they're offering.

[asdasf]

Yes. And of the small number of people who believe they can do that, 99% of them can not.

[dllthomas]

How do I tell?

(nod to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

[nerfhammer]

The DKE means people rate themselves closer to average for both those below average and above average. But people below average still think they are below those at the top, just not by the amount they think.

[dllthomas]

So if I think I'm above average, I'm good?

[dllthomas]

From the Wikipedia link:

"Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd."

[Double_Cast]

http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k...

A glance at the graph above should explain everything. Though many assume the slope of the "perception graph" is monotonically negative, the slope is actually positive.

[nerfhammer]

No, people tend to think they are above average at any task they spend time on. That's a different cognitive bias.

[dllthomas]

But my point, reinforced by the numbers I gave, is that there is overlap in the distributions between "how good I think I am" for those actually at the bottom and those actually at the top. There may well be other cognitive biases at play.