But they are unsuited to working in very large companies which requires collaboration, patience and tolerance of other views. And pretty sure they know it too.
You can make the tired hiring practices are the problem argument but actually it's the nature of large companies themselves that self-select for these types of people.
The passionate grumps don't lack collaboration, patience and tolerance. Instead they have more commitment to the product and company then to power relationships and hierarchies
They may also be impossible to work with but that's independent (alright, it's likely correlated).
Anyway, the hard-nosed ones are closer in spirit to scientists who get mischaracterized as uncooperative inflexible foot-draggers because their advocacies and endorsements aren't a functional of social relationships and ideally can't be changed by them.
> Current valley hiring practices filter out the mischiefs needed to take things from sustaining to innovative. It's why tech is coasting and deteriorating.
> Passionate weirdos like JWZ, Stallman, TBL, Carmack, Cutler, Torvalds, Woz, Pike, Wall, Jobs and Bellard are required
Originally posted over here: (https://twitter.com/emoRobot/status/1552076562027098112)
And 15 hours ago, a similar sentiment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32246777 )
> I blame modern tech hiring processes that filter out people who aren't conforming enthusiastic obedient cheerleaders.
> You get a sustain and self-extinguish product instead of one that can respond to what the necessity of the times demand
> You must have passionate grumps otherwise you're just shaking pom-poms as you run over a cliff.
It's probably coincidental but thanks anyway
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This is also related to a new axiom I've developed, first stated in a similar discussion on instagram here (https://old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/w8hy0e/instagram...)
> "The quality of a commercial software product is inversely proportional to the difficulty of the problem it solves, how long it's been around for and how successful it's been"
Essentially as a solution reaches stability and success, there's margins of profit that keep a staff of engineers and managers employed to work on the system. As a result they mutate the system - drifting it away from being a good solution to real problems to an unfocused solution to theoretical problems. It's a core organizational feature how we don't treat software as infrastructure where putting something in maintenance mode is the majority of the lifecycle of a successful product (for instance, whatever building you're in right now).
So as the generations of engineers cycle in and out you get this discordance between the two: earnest new people getting paid very well to change a product that usually has no pressing need for change. They do it anyway and thus successful simple commercial software products decline in relevance and quality over time as an inadvertent result of mismanaged good intentions. Furthermore when a change is warranted, nobody in this model has the agency, authority, political capital, or willpower to do the proper reframing (think Apple Newton -> iPod -> iPhone) without excessive compromises.
The solution? Go to part 1 above.