
Hacker News Fires Steve Yegge  - DanielRibeiro
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-steve-yegge.html
======
brown9-2
It must be a truly great place to work if the sentences "I quit this project"
and "I quit this company" don't end up with the same result.

How many companies let the employee choose to stop working on a project they
are assigned to?

~~~
notatoad
perhaps a more pertinent question would be "how many companies would let Steve
Yegge choose to stop working on the project he's assigned to?"

freedom like that is earned, and i'm sure not everybody at google has the same
status he does.

~~~
enneff
Engineers at Google are not hired for specific projects. You're appraised as a
good engineer, therefore we want you at Google. If you're not happy doing what
you're doing, we'd like to find something you will be happy doing. But that
doesn't mean you can just chop and change projects at will. It's considered
pretty uncool to just quit a project abruptly without making the appropriate
arrangements first. You've got to leave your work in a good state so that your
teammates and successors can pick up where you left off.

I don't know anything about Steve's situation, but I would assume he did these
things.

~~~
seventythree
How does Google handle the intractably undesirable projects like internal apps
for performance reviews, cleaning up huge legacy codebases, et al?

It seems unlikely that there aren't any projects that have to be done but that
no one wants to do.

~~~
iamscanner
Maybe I'm an outlier, but I actually really enjoy cleaning up huge legacy
codebases. Maybe there's also someone out there who likes building internal
apps for performance reviews.

~~~
notJim
On top of this, people are very grateful for those who clean up messes, and
that gratitude pays dividends.

------
tomfakes
Here's the money quote:

    
    
      I'm officially quitting that job on national TV
    

The use of the word 'job' there implies The Job, not 'the job on the project',
hence the overall confusion - people taking the words as said, not as meant

Note: Did HN just screw up this same posting?

~~~
rsanheim
Agreed, interesting that Yegge stresses _project_ in his post when he clearly
says _job_ in the video.

~~~
jshen
He said it more than once, and clearly said project one of those times. He
also gave context that made it quite clear he was talking about the project.

~~~
nimblegorilla
He made it pretty clear that he was quitting "that job" and going to study
more bioinformatics. As far as I know Google doesn't do a lot of
bioinformatics. Peppered with a couple of his midlife crisis comments it seems
like a fair assumption that he was leaving Google. At no time in the video did
he explicitly say that he was staying.

~~~
jshen
Hm, i just rewatched it and you are right. When I watched it the first I took
it to mean that project, but it was confusing.

------
calibraxis
_"Google's interview process -- what's the word I'm looking for here -- ah
yes, their process sucks at letting in all the qualified people. They're
trying to get better at it, but it's not really Google's fault so much as the
fault of interviewers who insist that you're not qualified to work there
unless you are exactly like them. Of course, there are interviewers like that
wherever you go."_

I imagine that's one of the big problems that females, older people and others
must face. If you're not like them (or everyone's stereotype of a qualified
person), you'll have a harder time getting in. Not to mention enjoying your
stay, once you're in.

(Maybe you're in a workplace that's so desperate for a little diversity that
it's actually easier for non-stereotypes to get in. But will your coworkers
act respectfully? I know that the guys at mine let loose putdowns about
females, even with females in the room. They don't even realize they're
putting females down.)

~~~
microarchitect
Exactly and it's the same at hacker news. Every time we see an article about
sexism in computer science, someone will show up saying that: (1) hackers are
the most egalitarian group that ever walked the face of the earth and (2)
they've never seen any discrimination happen. The implication here is that
sexism doesn't exist in computer science.

I have seen my colleague tell (ostensibly being funny) a female co-worker that
she was hired because of her looks. I've also seen people joke about
interviewing attractive women. These might seem innocuous to privileged males
but they definitely contribute to making the workplace worse for women and so
are IMHO completely unacceptable.

These are just two small issues - and I've heard a lot worse, but try and tell
someone like DHH that we have a problem. He'll rant about how being edgy is
cool and that being edgy _requires_ us to make these tasteless "jokes".

------
chegra
Could have sworn I saw this at no.1 with 44points in 12 minutes with about 7
comments. And there was a guy requesting a feature saying he hates to be that
guy.

Edit: Oh it died: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813976>

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Guess it got flagged quite fast because of the title. Maybe I should change it
to give more the spirit of the post.

 _Edit:_ hope it is better now.

~~~
raldi
What did it say initially?

~~~
DanielRibeiro
It was the title of the blog (Hacker News Fires Steve Yegge ), which I
understand that can be misleading and offsensive to some.

 _Edit:_ Guess I was wrong. Someone changed back to the original title. I
guess it is more compliant with HN guidelines.

------
bretthoerner
So basically his inspirational talk turned into "I was pulled over to the
Google Plus team, but I said never mind and went back to working on developer
tools"?

Kind of a let down. :(

~~~
pnathan
Developer tools are kind of a big deal.

~~~
bartonfink
Not really in the sense he was talking about. He literally stood up at a major
conference and urged the development community to go learn bioinformatics and
work on the cure for cancer. No developer tool will ever come close to the
amount of positive impact on the world that a cure for cancer would.

~~~
jrockway
Biology is being held back by the low-quality code that the biologists are
forced to write and maintain. Producing better programming tools means that
biologists can start writing better programs.

This is already happening. The world of science woke up one day and realized
that the C++ and Java their CS friends were talking about weren't helping them
solve problems. So they switched to Python and Perl and now we have the human
genome.

Programming tools are a big fucking deal.

~~~
kenjackson
_This is already happening. The world of science woke up one day and realized
that the C++ and Java their CS friends were talking about weren't helping them
solve problems. So they switched to Python and Perl and now we have the human
genome._

Oh, that's how it happened? Weird, I thought they were using lots of C++.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/IEB/ToolBox/CPP_DOC/>

<http://www.seqan.de/>

I guess I'd better go remind them to cancel their conferences and close up
shop.

~~~
bane
I think he's talking about this

<http://www.bioperl.org/wiki/How_Perl_saved_human_genome>

------
dougws
I'm surprised Stevey didn't mention that this is not the first time something
like this has happened: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/12/boring-
stevey-status...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/12/boring-stevey-
status-update.html) .

------
kodisha
Hi all,

I am original poster of "Steve Yegge quits Google in the middle of his
speech".

Now I get to brag around the office that Steve Yegge rage-posted because of me
^_^

I am really sorry if I caused some trouble, but I was just interpreting things
as i heard them, he really did say "... quitting that JOB..."

I would like to say that I totally agree with Steve. But unlike him I can't
afford to quit my "job", but what I can afford is to setup my PS3 and my
desktop machines to work on folding@home and World Community Grid whenever
they are idle.

Best, Dragan.

------
vailripper
He mentions how broken the typical interview process is, something I hear
repeated frequently. I'm curious what you guys think the "ideal" interview
process would look like?

~~~
daleharvey
it looks awfully like "hey, we need x and y done, I (worked with you before /
was recommended by a friend I trust / follow your open source contributions /
blog) and think you would be a good fit, interested?

------
ddw
I'm not trying to be crass, I really don't know: what does he mean by Google
is "forcing governments to be more open, forcing corporations to play more
fairly"? I'm racking my head on how this could be true as I would really like
it to believe it.

~~~
pnathan
Basically, high-quality search and comprehensive indexing means its hard to
sweep things under the rug: once the data gets out onto the net, it tends to
stay there. Google's played a large part in that.

------
madmaze
here is his talk, very inspiring

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8>

~~~
nikcub
interesting - but I didn't totally buy into it. new web communication tools
are helping to bring down governments and giving people new freedoms

it is like telling alexander graham bell to not waste his time on the
telephone since people are just going to use it to spread gossip and rumor

~~~
majmun
But it would be so convinient for Google if they have less competition working
in communication tools. and more working on projects that Google is not
working on. yes longevity of life is important but quality is also important.

~~~
blhack
I think this is the highest level of tinfoil hattery I have yet seen on Hacker
News.

Google gets Steve Yegge to encourage coders to work on bioinformatics because
it gets rid of the competition!

(I doubt that)

~~~
majmun
It is different point of view but I just said it would be convinient, wouldn't
it? i also don't know what is really going on.

------
suyash
Source code can be turned in the form of wikipedia information, how awesome
that would be, reading and understanding bad code or not properly documented
or written code is one hard problem in the industry that needs a really good
solution. Good luck Steve.

------
fedd
with _this_ headline the magical voice-over told me he was fired from hacker
news.

------
riprock
I think a big reason why most people go with a career and degree in software
engineering as opposed to bioinformatics is because of a bigger job market, a
higher salary potential, and a lower commitment to achieve the goal (computer
science degree as a 4 or 6 year degree, vs a mandatory 8+ year degree in
bioinformatics.) Unless these things change, bioinformatics will remain
unappealing to top google engineers who are paid to scale cat pictures at
salaries like 250k+.

To add one more thing, perl is huge in the bioinformatics community, which
would never win a popularity contest among software developers.

~~~
sciurus
I expect that most universities have a core curriculum that requires CS majors
to take other science courses. Make those courses genetics and biochemistry
and a CS undergraduate can probably get into a 2-year masters program for
bioinformatics.

~~~
riprock
I might get some backlash for this, but while you can apply for some
bioinformatics jobs with a MS, PhD is the norm not the exception for biology-
related fields. Without a PhD, you won't get very far career-wise.

------
dstein
This is more like "Steve Yegge discovers the power of linkbait".

------
mannicken
I interviewed at a Google campus in Kirkland. Unimpressed. Overrated madly, in
my opinion. I expected a lot, a lot better campus, sorry. The buildings were
boring and I couldn't find the right one because NONE OF THEM have a visible
building number.

There is no map of the campus (hell, even community colleges have maps). The
parking didn't have cover so after staying under hot sun, my car became
extremely hot.

Unpleasant experience to say the least. People were cool, though.

I just had a much better feeling from Microsoft campus than Google's campus.

~~~
DaveMebs
While it is a fair point, you have to keep in ming you are comparing
Microsoft's main campus with a secondary Google campus.

~~~
nostrademons
Yeah, the secondary campuses (except, I've heard, for Zurich and
Moscow...Pittsburgh is pretty cool too) are nowhere near as nice as the
headquarters. Many of them don't even serve dinner.

~~~
drgath
> "Many of them don't even serve dinner."

Oh the humanity.

------
swah
Folks that are good at making money to invest in folks solving big problems. I
don't get it.

------
jsavimbi
Regardless of what Steve does in his professional life, I, for one, am going
to stop procrastinating on all of those R links I've been saving up on
Evernote and get down to some science.

~~~
david927
And share those links with the rest of us!

<http://digitalauteur.wikispaces.com>

~~~
jsavimbi
I follow <http://www.r-bloggers.com/> but hopefully I'll be able to contribute
something in the future.

