
What If Drivers Were Hired Like Programmers? - jitbit
http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/05/what-if-drivers-were-hired-like.html
======
ramanujan
This joke doesn't get the point: computer science is one of the few areas
where one person can solve a problem literally one million times as fast as
another, if you measure in running time.

You don't get those kinds of productivity differentials in driving.

Moreover, access to the latest and greatest tech is a click away and costs
nothing. If you were a professional driver and could click in your spare time
to be in the driver's seat of a Ferrari or tank for free, of course you'd do
it if you cared at all about your craft.

Finally, the hours and wages of computer scientists are obviously far better,
so more demands in a CV are reasonable.

At best this is a sendup of the Craigslist naifs looking to build an FB killer
at $15/hour...but I get the sense he's saying that employers shouldn't be so
demanding.

Yet it is peers rather than employers who've set that standard, as there
actually _are_ a fairly substantial number of people who can do frontend and
backend, full stack.

They're called hackers.

~~~
there
_computer science is one of the few areas where one person can solve a problem
literally one million times as fast as another, if you measure in running
time._

i'm not sure what you're arguing. that a professional programmer could
optimize a program to be a million times faster than an unskilled programmer?
or that the program would run a tiny bit faster but over the life of the
program running continuously, it would do a million times more work?

a professional racecar driver racing around a circuit could finish a lap 10
seconds faster than an unskilled driver. over the course of a 24-hour
endurance race, those 10 seconds would add up to a lot of time.

~~~
ramanujan
Well, in driving, the ultimate time ratio would not be a million fold or even
close, even taken over the entire lifetimes of driver 1 and 2. An extreme
differential would be 10X.

There are a few different ways to formulate the comparison in CS. For
simplicity, consider a one-time eigenvalue computation on a large matrix (used
for Pagerank and many other things). You could measure the total time from
sitting down at the computer to having the numbers flow out onto the monitor.
Let's consider the ratio of total time taken by skilled programmer one vs.
unskilled programmer two.

The first obvious point is that many unskilled programmers wil not even be
able to formulate the problem, leading to a ratio of infinity (i.e. any
solution by programmer one will be infinitely faster than no solution).

Contrast to the driving example. Legions of smart engineers have made driving
as simple as turning a key. So driver one and two will both be able to get
started.

You can continue the analogy. As the size of the matrix gets larger, some
programmer twos will get bogged down in trying to compute every eigenvalue,
while programmer one uses something like the Arnoldi-Lanczos algorithm to pull
out only the ones they need. Depending on matrix size this can quickly become
literally one million times as fast as the naive solution.

This is not a theoretical example, but very similar to the tech behind Kaltix,
one of Google's first acquisitions. It's not too hard to find many more
examples. Moreover, this is for just one problem; when accumulated over time
as in the hypothetical driver comparison, the ratios get even greater.

------
Deestan
"I see here you have several years experience driving Volvo, Ford, Volkswagen,
Opel and Toyota. I'm sorry, but we're looking for a Honda driver."

~~~
prodigal_erik
"Must have ten+ years of Tesla driving experience."

------
IgorPartola
Before everyone gets all uppety about this post, please take 30 seconds to
chucle about it. Then, instead of saying how the industry is so screwed up
remember that there are certain jobs where being master-of-all-trades is at
least a good nice to have. For example a front-end specialist or a DBA may not
be who a startup looking for its first employee might need.

Lastly, reject any job ad that requires 20 years of RoR experience. Instead
focus on what the company does. If it is interesting to you, apply. I found
that most employers arbitrarily choose requirements, and I just avoid all that
want certifications: they tend to be too enterprisy for my taste.

For web people: look at what the perspective employer's product is using for
language/framework. It is easy to do and will win you points. It will also
help you avoid maintaining legacy systems running on NT if that's not your
thing.

~~~
skidooer
As someone who tries to be a master of all, I don't see anything ridiculous
about the requirements. If your passion is cars, you're likely to have some
knowledge in all of those areas just because you love cars, if for no other
reason.

What I found funny, and unfortunately all too true, was the pay offering. They
want it all, but are only willing to pay slightly above minimum wage to get
it.

~~~
georgieporgie
_If your passion is cars, you're likely to have some knowledge in all of those
areas just because you love cars, if for no other reason._

So, a person who is applying to a driving position should be so passionate
about 'cars' that they should have a background in rally driving and heavy
tanks?

I think this reveals your ignorance of vehicles. Similarly, I think the sort
of job posts that this post is mocking reveal an ignorance on the part of
whoever is posting the ad.

~~~
skidooer
While karma is meaningless, I appreciate your reply instead of just voting me
down. I was wondering what was wrong with my post and appreciate any feedback
that can help me provide better comments in the future.

In my experience, those who are passionate about a topic want to learn about
all of the topics surrounding that topic. If you like to drive, you're
probably going to want to know what makes a car tick and even get your hands
dirty. I know that's not true of everyone, but generally speaking, I think it
is.

You don't have to be passionate about driving to be a good driver. However,
given the choice, why wouldn't you want to hire the guy who lives and breaths
cars if they are also an excellent driver? Their additional skills will not
hurt to have around, even if they are not directly applicable to the job at
hand.

If you are at all interested in the job, you're going to apply no matter what
the ad says is required. However, the long list of requirements gives you some
insight into what the company does. Asking for a C++ programmer could mean
anything, but if you also need MySQL experience, you've got a good indicator
that you're going to be writing code that interfaces with a database. This
helps you weed out the candidates offering jobs you may not be at all
interested in.

~~~
georgieporgie
_If you like to drive, you're probably going to want to know what makes a car
tick and even get your hands dirty._

1) I know several people who are absolute car nuts. Some of them are excellent
drivers. Few of them do their own 'dirty' work. (note: I do my own dirty work,
but I realize that has less to do with a passion for cars than a passion for
independence and understanding systems)

2) That has nothing to do with the article that was posted. Reread it. Note
the bit about rally, tanks, and F1 experience as a plus.

 _the long list of requirements gives you some insight into what the company
does_

That really doesn't have much to do with the original post, either. It's
talking about the (sometimes/often) ridiculous specificity and enormous range
of requirements you'll find in job postings. Employers complain of being
unable to find "good candidates," yet they'll reject a senior engineer for
lacking one bulleted item, regardless of its complexity in relationship to the
other requirements. In my experience, this is largely caused by the HR gateway
and general incompetence in first-tier candidate selection.

Similarly, refusing to interview a candidate for a bus driver position because
the person has no experience driving tanks would be silly.

------
mattdeboard
I'm sure if a team of skilled driver/mechanic hybrids was the difference
between a mediocre or failed business, and multi-multi-million-dollar paydays,
the market would be much more competitive and employers would feel the need to
have such outsized "obligatories."

In other words, the subtle critique of the job market isn't really accurate.
"What if clowns were hired like programmers?" "What if Wal-Mart greeters were
hired like programmers?" Invalid.

More precise would be, "What if [carpenters|plumbers|machinists|general
contractors] were hired like programmers?" The writeup on that topic wouldn't
be quite so snarky, I think.

~~~
DrCatbox
I think the article is alluding to the wide span of requirements which is
quite impossible to achieve in any field, even if you are a programmer. But
thats not really the case in the real world, altough I have seen some job ads
like that, where they sought people with experience in x86 assembly, C# and
database modelling as well as front-end development.

~~~
mattdeboard
I know what it's alluding to. It's just 1). silly to compare hiring a
programmer to hiring a car driver for many reasons and 2). very unlikely
anyone would hire a job posting for a [front-end dev|HTML&CSS|customer
support] (choose your own metaphor) who has experience in kernel programming,
which is what this faulty metaphor is alluding to.

It may happen, but I'd be surprised if it's regular enough to be considered
how programmers are hired.

~~~
Tangaroa
The link exaggerates, but web developer positions often require knowledge of
every tool in the chain from the server to Photoshop and Flash. You have to be
the front-end art guy and the front-end implementation guy and the back-end
coder and the DBA and the system administrator, for $10-$12 per hour or less
if it's a fixed-payment contract.

~~~
mattdeboard
Really? $10-12/hr? That's about what my internship pays. I've seen ridiculous
job listings ("Developer needed -- M.S. in Computer Science required, PhD
preferred"-type listing for what seem to be pretty standard programming jobs),
but I assume they were paying significantly more than $10/12 hr

~~~
Tangaroa
My memory for the wage scale was stuck around 2002-2003, so add a decade's
worth of inflation.

~~~
mattdeboard
With all respect, I think either the salary or the requirements have been
exaggerated in the retelling since then.

------
hasenj
This is ridiculous. Of course drivers won't have all that; they're just
drivers. In computer terms, a car driver is not like a programmer, but rather
more like a touch typist. Of course you wouldn't expect a person whose job is
typing on keyboards to understand anything about how the internet works or
what databases are.

~~~
PostOnce
It's one thing to be able to do anything, but it's something else to have
actually done it. There are only so many hours in a day.

I, and many others, can make a great deal of progress on anything in a week,
but I wonder when looking at these ads, how many jobs must one have had in
order to be experienced with so many different technologies?

Programming is about constant learning. How many of us have gone a single day
without looking something up? What a programmer can learn is as important as
what he has learned.

~~~
skidooer
If you do project-based work professionally, each project can come with its
own set of technologies and related experiences. Combine that with a few
personal side using another set of technologies, and the array of technologies
you are experienced with can grow pretty rapidly.

------
dennisgorelik
The compensation part is incorrect. It should be "Depends on experience".

------
puppetsock
If you were a driver, wouldn't you _want_ to be that awesome of a driver?

------
civilian
"If car drivers were hired like programmers, then a single failed deploy (car
crash) would be enough to be fired!"

\--Senior Expert in Italian cuisine and consumables distribution for Round
Table Pizza.

------
barrkel
I really dislike this submission (flagged). It's facile humour, but only just
barely funny. I found myself wishing people who upvoted it could be banished.
But that thought gave me another.

What would a layering / segmentation of HN users look like? Imagine the voting
history of HN users on certain types of articles was used to classify them,
and each classification of user saw a version of HN customized to only users
of their classification, including front page articles, comment and new
submissions, in a transparent way similar to hell-banning?

Probably too elitist and conducive to groupthink, but worth an idle ponder.

~~~
trotsky
One of the things I like about HN is being exposed to ideas and projects
outside of my usual circles of interest, things that don't show up in my RSS
or twitter feeds. I'm pretty sure any segmentation system like that would just
spit my narrow interests back at me.

I didn't find the link to be worth much, but it also took almost no time to
read. It is hard for me to imagine any aggregator not having some poor content
for any given reader, even if a filter was employed.

~~~
barrkel
I'm not so sure it would be the case, as it depends on what is being filtered
for, but as I said, groupthink... At this point, one of HN's problems is
simply scale; cities are qualitatively different to villages. Reddit has sub-
reddits, but that just stages things explicitly. I wondered if something more
subtle could work.

------
makeramen
If we raise the stakes to race car drivers, then relevant knowledge on
specific tracks, car types, with a performance record would probably be very
applicable.

When you're trying to find the best of the best in both drivers or developers,
the driver should definitely know about how all the components in his machine
affect his performance. This also allows him to communicate his intent and any
adjustments that he wants made with the rest of the team (mechanics, crew,
etc.).

The problem comes when employers start looking for talent out of their league,
like Greyhound trying to hire NASCAR drivers to drive their busses.

------
andreyon
this is how job posts written by hr look like

------
Tangaroa
We also have entry-level positions available; a Master's degree and a minimum
of two years of full-time experience is required.

(I really see more and more low-level coder jobs require a Master's degree, at
least more and more than I noticed before I got my Bachelor's)

~~~
mattdeboard
Yeah, it only takes 20 seconds of searching on Monster to bear witness to this
phenomenon.

------
gcb
and then HR sends a bunch of kids with skates that doesn't even have drivers
licenses.

and the hiring manager hires the one that reads the same car magazine as him
because "he had to pick one on that hiring cycle"

can't wait to work only at the start up...

------
Luyt
And what if Microsoft made cars? (this is an old one)

At a recent COMDEX, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with
the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the
computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that
got 1000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors
issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft,
we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1\. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.

2\. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a
new car.

3\. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you
would just accept this, restart and drive on.

4\. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your
car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to
reinstall the engine.

5\. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought "Car95" or
"CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats.

6\. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five
times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent
of the roads.

7\. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced
by a single "general car default" warning light.

8\. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

9\. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

10\. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and
refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned
the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.

11\. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand
McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them
nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the
car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a
target for investigation by the Justice Department.

12\. Everytime GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to
drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same
manner as the old car.

13\. You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.

~~~
russell
>> 4\. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause
your car to shut down...

I had one of those, a Plymouth Voyager. Going from our house in the mountains
there was an intersection with a sharp down hill right turn. Sometimes the car
would stall with a loss of power steering. My wife was small and she int like
it all.

