
Dumb and gets things done - fogus
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-things-done/
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eggoa
This is off topic, but I've read that Napoleon actually did value his stupid
but energetic officers. They could be counted on to charge whenever ordered,
even against impossible odds. (That particular officer would likely die, but
that was acceptable part of the overall plan.) Baron Marbot was wounded a
dozen or so times this way.

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afterburner
Reminds me of a Critical Thinking course my company held; the instructor asked
everyone how many lazy people they'd want working for them. Everyone who
answered said "none", but the instructor countered that they would want at
least a few lazy people, so that those people could find the shortcuts and
work-saving techniques that could save the whole group time, instead of going
full out on a bunch of stuff that's unnecessary or needlessly tedious. I
assume the assumption was that these lazy people were also competent, ie.
"smart", or they wouldn't necessarily find/make the short-cuts...

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pavel_lishin
Or worse, the shortcuts they took ended up hurting in the long-run.

Making room for the new interns' desks by putting them in the unused corner,
instead of renting more office space, is a great shortcut, unless it blocks
the fire escape and your building catches fire.

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maigret
Wouldn't you trust the rest of the team to cross-check that? I mean, if no
ones sees that the fire escape is blocked, not only the lazy folks are your
problem...

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j_baker
My experience is that "dumb and gets things done" is almost always the most
heavily rewarded. Mostly because they are _always_ busy. Most managers tend to
stop once they determine if someone gets things done. And the dumb ones
certainly get more done than anyone else.

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airfoil
Reminds me of the note at the end of the perl man page:

"The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and
Hubris."

I'm not a Perl guy, but I love that quote.

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gcheong
I'm usually dumb until I've gotten something done. Then I realize I could have
done it much smarter.

~~~
rhizome
Refactoring is not just for code. :)

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Flankk
"Joel Spolsky says that the ideal programmer is someone who is smart and gets
things done. But what about people who are dumb and get things done?"

They are not ideal.

~~~
pmorici
According to this article they should be shot.

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mathgladiator
Deep to this is the ability to measure. We like to measure things, and we like
to reward proportionate to what we measure.

It doesn't work for creativity based fields, but it works great for non-
creative tasks. I would look up Dan Pink's book called Drive.

You can factor the work equation and combine both methodologies to enable
smart programmers to work with dumb programmers. The key is to understand
where the line between smart and tedious is.

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philwelch
There's a similarity with politics. Ideally you want to vote for someone
ethical and effective. But the worst candidate is someone who is unethical and
effective.

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edw519
_Computer programs consists of lines of code, and lines of code consist of
characters. So it’s good for a programmer to be proficient in producing lines
of code and characters._

The more proficient I get the more I think that there's an inverse
relationship between proficiency and lines of code needed to produce a result.

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shrikant
IMHO the writer is setting up simplistic strawmen to knock down, without going
into nuances. For e.g., why conflate 'getting things done' with 'producing bad
code'?

Also, in the paragraph about a 'good teacher', he protests that that this
wouldn't matter if they were ignorant. Maybe he could do a better job of
conveying the exact context, but I would contend that 'good' implies
'knowledgeable' for a teacher. I've had plenty of teachers who were
knowledgeable, but couldn't teach/communicate for nuts.

 _p.s_ : I might be a bit defensive here, as I honestly consider myself of the
'dumb but gets things done' ilk.

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brlewis
A teacher who instills enthusiasm in a subject area is more valuable than a
teacher with no knowledge gaps in said subject area, all other things being
equal.

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markbnine
I'd first get rid of "smart and doesn't get things done"

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bballbackus
As a high schooler, I'm fascinated with a similar paradox that I've observed.
In my opinion there are four defining types of students, smart with a strong
work ethic, average intelligence with a strong work ethic, smart but prone to
procrastination, and average and prone to procrastination. In the schooling
system, the order I listed is also the order of highest grades to lowest
grades, meaning that these groups are ordered in highest to lowest scholastic
value. I don't think this order is relevant outside of school though as people
take more targeted jobs that appeal to their interests. This presents a
problem as college admittance is based on the hierarchy I listed, meaning that
some of the smarter kids will be put on a path that doesn't set them up for an
optimal career.

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ck2
Many times "dumb and energetic" succeed because they don't overthink what
can't be done and somehow make their problem everyone else's.

This is like the person that keeps calling you to fix their computer (and then
you keep doing it).

