You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss

[Darren Dirt]

You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss

http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

I suspect that working for oneself feels better to humans in much the same way that living in the wild must feel better to a wide-ranging predator like a lion. Life in a zoo is easier, but it isn't the life they were designed for.

What's so unnatural about working for a big company? The root of the problem is that humans weren't meant to work in such large groups.

What I've read about hunter-gatherers accords with research on organizations and my own experience to suggest roughly what the ideal size is: groups of 8 work well; by 20 they're getting hard to manage; and a group of 50 is really unwieldy. Whatever the upper limit is, we are clearly not meant to work in groups of several hundred.

...

The restrictiveness of big company jobs is particularly hard on programmers, because the essence of programming is to build new things.

I was talking recently to a founder who considered starting a startup right out of college, but went to work for Google instead because he thought he'd learn more there. He didn't learn as much as he expected.

Programmers learn by doing, and most of the things he wanted to do, he couldn't?sometimes because the company wouldn't let him, but often because the company's code wouldn't let him.

An obstacle downstream propagates upstream. If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them.

And vice versa: when you can do whatever you want, you have more ideas about what to do.

[Thorin]

Are those your words, or a quote from the article?  If they are a quote from the article, do they accurately reflect your opinion, or does you opinion differ?  Just trying to establish some goalposts before trying to debate this.

[Darren Dirt]

Are those your words, or a quote from the article?
quote (long but worth reading)

If they are a quote from the article, do they accurately reflect your opinion, or does you opinion differ?
(long but IMO definitely worth reading -- even if you don't 100% agree there's a lot of powerful points that got me thinking, personally)

Just trying to establish some goalposts before trying to debate this.
no offense but WHY does everything have to be a "debate"? I'm not trying to win over anybody when I passionately share material that I feel something strong about... While I respect your intelligence and strength of Will, Thorin, sometimes I wish you could just appreciate that it's meaningful to me without somebody having to "win"

answers in bold

This is not a trolling or a setup or an attempt to debate or w/e.

I found it while accidentally stumbling upon 15 year old blog from Aaron Swartz (that is still VERY readable today, that kid was mature beyond his years!) and I read it, and in this case yes I liked what I read, I felt stuff, I shared with RW gang. Because you guys are my friends, NOT MY TARGETS FOR CONVERSION or w/e.

Not everything is a damn "articulate your exact position, now defend every aspect of your entire position" sitch. @%&#.

[Thorin]

I assumed that when you posted it, it was because you wanted us to consider it and discuss it, as you have with many other posts similar to this.  You didn't say, "Here's an interesting read I found", so I didn't know that you were just sharing for the sake of sharing, rather than to discuss it.  Although you do still appear to want us to read it, but what's the point of us reading it if not to discuss it afterwards?

* I should have used the word "discuss" rather than "debate", I wasn't expecting to have an argument with winners and losers but you do frequently share posts and then seem to want to discuss them.

Anyway, I asked the questions just to be clear on the context and intent of the post, not to accuse you of trolling or anything.

[Darren Dirt]

I assumed that when you posted it, it was because you wanted us to consider it and discuss it, as you have with many other posts similar to this.

That's on you.

That's in your mind. Your presumptions.

How about a presumption of innocence. How about just reading what somebody shares, that you know from Adam... and experiencing your own "film" rather than first asking what you should expect to be viewing? And share what you wish, instead of needing to know what boundaries/filters "should" come into play.

Live.

Or not, your choice. Freedom.

You didn't say, "Here's an interesting read I found", so I didn't know that you were just sharing for the sake of sharing, rather than to discuss it.  Although you do still appear to want us to read it, but what's the point of us reading it if not to discuss it afterwards?

* I should have used the word "discuss" rather than "debate", I wasn't expecting to have an argument with winners and losers but you do frequently share posts and then seem to want to discuss them.

Anyway, I asked the questions just to be clear on the context and intent of the post, not to accuse you of trolling or anything.

You have done that kind of accusation MANY times in the past. OR, you reply to my posts -- and ONLY mine -- with a terse link to some "debunking" article, as if that's discussion.

Other times, when numbers/facts are involved, I appreciate how you provide information that any of us can analyze on our own, make sense of, make decisions or changes because of... But much of the stuff I am feeling pissed off about are because of complete misunderstandings, of my intent, or my POV, or "what you should do with what I am sharing". How about... whatever you want, without having to first be told what is "allowed" in that reaction?

[Mr. Analog]

I saw the OP and didn't know what to make of it, but at least one person decided to go a little deeper and felt confused by what you were sharing (I think?)

Even now I'm having a hard time parsing what's being said but if the general gist of it is "smaller organizations are better" then that leaves the door wide open for a lot of opinions - and we all know where opinion based conversations end up online. If that's not gist of the article then it'd be nice to get a summary as it relates to us programmer pals??

Just throwin' that out there...

[Lazybones]

Everyone brings their own bias and assumptions.

I generally assume by default stuff people post on forums and social media are not their opinion but maybe just something they found interesting and wanted to share.

?\_(ツ)_/?

[Darren Dirt]

Everyone brings their own bias and assumptions.

I generally assume by default stuff people post on forums and social media are not their opinion but maybe just something they found interesting and wanted to share.

?\_(ツ)_/?

And you'd be right!

Well, imo, I think so, anyway.

The quote above is a perfect summary of what my verbose walls of text were trying to communicate.

Now I do feel chill.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Oops, wait, only I have Friday off... Ouch, sorry guys.

[Darren Dirt]

Seriously funny that I found this article... as I was perusing the rest of his excellent blog on a completely different journey.


He is a really articulate smart dev who speaks his unorthodox truth about OOP and debugging tools vs unit tests and how NULL shouldn't be a thing etc. Recommended reading for a different POV even if you don't do Java. **

https://www.yegor256.com/2015/07/21/hourly-pay-modern-slavery.html

(Sorry for the controversial link title )



** e.g.https://www.yegor256.com/2015/07/16/fools-dont-write-unit-tests.html