
Recruiting and Retaining Giants [pdf] - bphogan
http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf
======
bphogan
This seems like such terrible, terrible advice. And yet when I hear stories on
HN and other places, I kinda wonder if this is a sarcastic take at the way
things work in software.

I would love to know the context of this. Was this seriously a talk that was
given somewhere? Do people actually accept this as actionable advice?

It's a little unnerving to me.

~~~
walterclifford
> Was this seriously a talk that was given somewhere?

Looks like it: [http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/07/16/recruiting-giants-
pr...](http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/07/16/recruiting-giants-presentation-
tomorrow/)

> Do people actually accept this as actionable advice?

Hopefully not, it's actually a bit shocking anyone in 2016 would write/present
things like "RULE 1: You don’t recruit and retain male engineers you recruit
and retain Wives and Girlfriends" or "Real engineers don’t burn out until
their wives or GF’s do."

~~~
Arnt
"Then slot in a new kid."

I hope the kids today have better offers and don't fall for this kind of rot.

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dsg42
Also, maybe there aren't many female engineers because they have to encounter
misogynist garbage like this on a daily basis. Maybe that's why they keep
leaving the industry and not because you can't identify them.

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dsg42
This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen on Hacker News. And I still remember
the guy who made an app to measure his heart rate while dunking his head in
ice water.

You're making our industry a terrible place to live and giving decent people a
bad name. Please stop.

~~~
bphogan
I hope this isn't directed at me -I posted the article cos I couldn't believe
someone would actually think this is advice. It's so horrible I wasn't even
sure it wasn't just really poorly done sarcasm.

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partycoder
There is a lot of stereotyping in this article.

Lots of assumptions about how developers date, marry, number of kids and what
their wife income is. Wives work too, this is not 1800.

The open source world is not a world of autism. I've attended many
presentations by successful open source project members and in most cases
they're excellent and effective communicators. Many open source organizations
are heavily social and cohesive in nature.

In my case the traits I see in mediocre people are:

\- heavily materialistic

\- focused solely on some getting promoted and compensated (e.g: being liked
by managers, shipping incomplete features, taking credit for everything,
repeating buzzwords) instead actually pursuing quality

\- stopped learning after college. can do programming puzzles perfectly but
keep reinventing the wheel and coming up with bizarre solutions

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Animats
I wish this were a joke.

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yarou
He forgot the last slide - find new job working minimum wage at Starbucks when
the tech bubble collapses and parasites like me are no longer needed.

~~~
bphogan
There are days when the end of Office Space seems like a good idea....

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tomlock
I closed this at the girlfriend slide. Flag this crap ASAP.

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dheavy
You lost me at rule #1 - "You don’t recruit and retain male engineers you
recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends".

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yarou
Hot, I give this fantasy 10/10

