Comment by aleph_minus_one
2 years ago
> What attracts people to being a programmer? For some people it’s “looks like a reasonable job with good pay and conditions”. For others, it’s more “I love computers, programming, and abstract puzzles to solve”. This latter group (of which I am one), is more likely to provide both benefits and problems.
> The benefit is they will generally be capable of greater innovation than the former group, but the downside is that they may just focus on interesting puzzles and ignore the needs of the (boring) business.
I think the problem rather is that many "business people" have a deep hate against people who love to think about whether there is a deeper hidden mathematical structure behind the business problems. Just to be clear: there also exist some few business people who appreciate this, but the latter are typically "nerds" who mostly switched to business because it pays much better.
It's not my experience that the latter group of programmers ignores the business problems, they just rather have their own much less anti-intellectual way of approaching them.
It’s simpler. Business people hate paying people for any other reason than making more money.
Yep, the ‘nerd’ analysis of something that is very trivial is funny really. It’s money: most business peeps don’t give a crap about you or your skills: they pay the minimum they can to up the gains and that’s it. No more complex explanations are needed.
> who love to think about whether there is a deeper hidden mathematical structure behind the business problems.
Yup and lots of whom started with programming as a hobby, and could chase after any shiny thing they saw, or run off whenever on any side quest that interested them.
Nobody wants to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars to navel gaze, or run off down whatever path you feel is mathematically satisfying. Do that on your own time. You're being paid hundreds of thousands dollars to deliver business value - so do that. Build mathematical towers on your own time.
It's like paying someone by the day to paint your house and they paint the Mona Lisa in white paint on white and take 3x as long because it's more artistically beautiful even if the end result is just an all white painted house.
"Don't you see the deeper hidden artistic structure!?"
> You're being paid hundreds of thousands dollars to deliver business value - so do that. Build mathematical towers on your own time.
A better understanding of the deep underlying structure behind the business problems is a step towards proving business value. This is exactly what I mean with a " much less anti-intellectual way of approaching [business problems]".
A better understanding of the deep underlying structure behind the business problems can be a step towards proving business value. Or it can be interesting to a small number of people, but completely useless.
Of course, the people to whom it is interesting think that the case they're interested in is almost certainly in the "providing business value" category. In their enthusiasm, they probably over-estimate the odds...
> "Don't you see the deeper hidden artistic structure!?"
This comes across as very snarky. The word used was "mathematical", not "artistic". Mathematics has proved invaluable in many domains of business.
> Mathematics has proved invaluable in many domains of business.
As has art.
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