<story><title>Why I went with them and not you: feedback to an interviewer</title><url>http://jamesob.nfshost.com/2011/04/01/them-vs-you.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coffeemug</author><text>The degree of entitlement among new grads in the software development industry is incredible. I know because I&apos;ve been there. Now I see it from the other side as an employer, and when I think of the way I acted after I graduated, I want to go back and kick myself. In retrospect, this was a sign of immaturity and self-aggrandizing.&lt;p&gt;I genuinely believed at the time that Emacs and Linux and Common Lisp somehow made me special, when in reality I just wanted to convince myself that I was a better developer than my peers. I wasn&apos;t. I was a good coder, but I was immature, wasted a ton of people&apos;s time, and refused to listen to people who wrote code that solved real problems while I was on my &quot;let&apos;s switch to Linux and Lisp&quot; crusade.&lt;p&gt;I can point out a ton of examples where Windows is significantly better than Linux and vice versa. Same goes for most programming languages, development environments, and software methodologies. Saying &quot;I like UNIX more and prefer to develop in it&quot; is one thing. Saying that a choice of the OS tells me something about an organization and that &lt;i&gt;their&lt;/i&gt; particular system of choice is somehow based on worse philosophical principles than my alternative is naive and condescending beyond belief.&lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb is to understand before you decide you&apos;ve understood. If we used this principle more often, the industry overall would be a much more nourishing environment to work in.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iamdave</author><text>&lt;i&gt;The rule of thumb is to understand before you decide you&apos;ve understood. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, no.&lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb ought to be find your own path, go with what works for you and forget everyone else&apos;s establishments.  Clearly this guy saw a job with a culture and environment that he got a good vibe from, he liked their approach, he liked their people, he chose them.&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, I personally don&apos;t know where this attitude comes from that the younger generations should have to toil and sweat and bleed before they get that opportunity engage in something that clicks with them.  Life is short, but JUST long enough to get those experiences in whatever way they come along in our lives.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I&apos;m just as sick of old curmudgeons coming along dictating to young people how they should run a career just because said old fogie had to go in a different direction just to get &lt;i&gt;his&lt;/i&gt; in the world as you are with recent grad students and their &quot;entitlement&quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why I went with them and not you: feedback to an interviewer</title><url>http://jamesob.nfshost.com/2011/04/01/them-vs-you.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coffeemug</author><text>The degree of entitlement among new grads in the software development industry is incredible. I know because I&apos;ve been there. Now I see it from the other side as an employer, and when I think of the way I acted after I graduated, I want to go back and kick myself. In retrospect, this was a sign of immaturity and self-aggrandizing.&lt;p&gt;I genuinely believed at the time that Emacs and Linux and Common Lisp somehow made me special, when in reality I just wanted to convince myself that I was a better developer than my peers. I wasn&apos;t. I was a good coder, but I was immature, wasted a ton of people&apos;s time, and refused to listen to people who wrote code that solved real problems while I was on my &quot;let&apos;s switch to Linux and Lisp&quot; crusade.&lt;p&gt;I can point out a ton of examples where Windows is significantly better than Linux and vice versa. Same goes for most programming languages, development environments, and software methodologies. Saying &quot;I like UNIX more and prefer to develop in it&quot; is one thing. Saying that a choice of the OS tells me something about an organization and that &lt;i&gt;their&lt;/i&gt; particular system of choice is somehow based on worse philosophical principles than my alternative is naive and condescending beyond belief.&lt;p&gt;The rule of thumb is to understand before you decide you&apos;ve understood. If we used this principle more often, the industry overall would be a much more nourishing environment to work in.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>beambot</author><text>The article does not rip on Windows.  It implies that OS / language choice says something about an organization&apos;s developer culture.  I share this belief, and it would be an important job criteria for me as well.&lt;p&gt;Consider three choices: (1) Big company X on Windows + .Net, (2) Big Company Y on Linux + C++, or (3) co-founding a new startup using whatever I prefer.  I wouldn&apos;t fault anyone for having pre-conceived notions about the cultures prominent at these companies, would you?</text></comment>