It's Not How Well the Dog Dances

The Moon Landing

25 February, 2019

AS11-40-5927
**Aldrin unpacks experiments from LM**

I was just reading a bit about a new documentary, Apollo 11, that apparently uses all original NASA footage to document the launch, the landing on the moon, and the return to earth. Apparently the film is quite something — it includes a lot of never-before-seen 70mm footage that has been sitting in archives for the last 50 years. Anyway, the review reminded me of a weird thing I used to always think when I was a kid — that I was born before the moon landing, and therefore experienced it, even though I was too young to remember it. I felt quite some satisfaction that I was around for it.

There are a few other events that fall into that category that loomed large in my childhood mind. I guess the biggest one was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., which happened in April 1968, three months after I came into the world. Martin Luther King was a towering figure in our household and I think I felt his loss keenly, once I was old enough to realize what that meant.

It seems odd to me, even today, that those two events should be such a part of my personal history, to the exclusion of other major things that happened around the same time. The assassination of Bobby Kennedy, for example, didn’t register, although it was certainly significant. Nor did the riots at the ’68 Democratic convention, the election of Richard Nixon, or the fall of Saigon make any splash in my consciousness (I never thought “Hey I was alive for the election of Richard Nixon!”). In fact, the only positive event I thought of as being part of my early childhood, was the moon landing. Everything else was doom, gloom, and disaster.

I know this must say something about my worldview today. The fact that I am inclined to believe there is an engineering solution to most problems must come from my sense of ownership of Apollo. Maybe my continuing belief in the power of non-violent protest comes similarly from my closeness to MLK’s death. And if this is true, I wonder what my nephews and nieces think about what happened around their birth? Does my niece Nora think to herself “Hey I was alive when Obama was elected!”? Maybe… and that’s a good thing, if it’s true.

What I doubt any of them are thinking about, is technology. We engineers don’t have much to show off since Apollo 11 — nothing so flashy, anyway. Maybe it’s time we put some real effort into flying cars.

The Water

24 February, 2019

One of the things I like about living where we live in Boston is that I get to walk over the ocean every day crossing the Summer Street Bridge to Fort Point. No matter how big a hurry I am in I find my eyes wandering to the surface of the water. It is choppy, churning, glassy smooth? Is the tide — without measuring, there must be a ten-foot variation in the Fort Point Channel — going in or out? Can you differentiate the ripples from the tidal flow from the chop the wind is blowing up? What’s under there, can I see the bridge pilings? There’s an endless flow of information — mostly useless, sure — that I can sample, and I find it delightful.

It’s safe to say that I don’t find land nearly as interesting, unless I am viewing it from the water. The interface between land and water is endlessly fascinating (I’m far from unique here I guess judging from all the time we spend at beaches). Even far out at sea, though, water is interesting. It reflects what’s around — the sky, clouds, your boat — while distorting it according to its mood. Occasionally interesting things like turtles pop out of it.

As I think about it, it occurs to me I like the same thing about people. I’d rather have a conversation with someone who is able to absorb, change, color, and reflect the world in interesting ways, than a conversation with someone who is not reflecting, or not changing. Even the music I like — jazz, bluegrass — involves absorbing, coloring, and reflecting back, hopefully in real time. The interplay of light on flow, or chop, or storm surge, is like the reinforcing feedback loop between a great soloist and a great drummer, where the net result is greater than either could achieve alone.

Unfortunately I am afraid reflection is out of fashion these days, at least in the shouting contest of social media and the popular press. I am certain it will come back in one day though, just like the tide.

Hire The Developer Today

23 February, 2019

Lizbeth Webb as Sarah Brown in the original London production of Guys And Dolls at The Coliseum Theatre 1953. Private collection, Public Domain, Link

Hiring, it is said, is the most difficult thing one can do as a manager. Managers who are good at hiring can’t tell you how they do it, and the literature is filled with tales of the horror that befalls managers who do it badly.

I don’t know exactly why it should be so hard to determine whether a candidate will fit well in your team and become a net addition, but it clearly is, and the more senior the person is the harder it gets. There is every possibility that the person who seems so easygoing and willing to learn in an interview, will turn out to be difficult and set in their ways once they get on the job. It is also nigh on impossible to evaluate someone’s skill as an engineer from a test or a transcript or a few code samples. This is especially true in an open-source context, where the definition of “skill” includes everything from “Writes the right code cleanly and quickly” to “Is able to convince unknown and probably cantankerous peers in the community that this patch should get in.” These two abilities, in particular, rarely appear in the same person, at least not when they walk in my door.

(If you are among those who believe that in open source the best ideas always win, I have another conversation to have with you, but for now you can read this post).

You would be right to ask me at this point why I think I’m so smart — what legendary track record do I have in hiring that allows me to pontificate on it? It’s a worthwhile question. I feel like I’ve built a few solid teams over the years, and I’ve taken them through some godawful wrenching changes — “We’re discontinuing your product because we acquired a startup with a competing product, so you all have to learn a new language and work on something completely different in a new community” — multiple times with a very low attrition rate. But I can’t claim any special ability to evaluate people in an interview and I doubt my ability to select the right person is any better than anyone else’s. Certainly, I have hired some great people, but… well, this is public, so I shouldn’t be any more specific than to say I have made a few mistakes too.

I do have one secret, however, and it is summed up in some very bad advice from a song from the ’50s musical Guys And Dolls: “Marry The Man Today.” The song holds that women are better off marrying an imperfect man and then reforming him into what they want him to be, than holding out for the perfect mate to come along. My mother, who had some experience with this theory (sorry Dad), told me early on “This is very very bad advice! Do not follow it!” She is right, of course — in the context of a marriage, it’s a terrible idea, a recipe for unhappiness or worse. In the context of a well functioning team, though, with a strong and healthy culture, it’s not necessarily wrong, especially if you are in the position we all find ourselves in now of having to recruit inexperienced folks straight out of college.

What does this mean in practice? It means I tend to interview people, especially young people, on non-technical criteria. Do they speak clearly and thoughtfully? Do they appear to be self aware, perhaps with a refreshing trace of irony? Did they take the time to find out who I am, what I do, what Red Hat does? If I’m lucky enough to find someone who meets these criteria, I will usually hire them, whether they have any experience in the area I’m hiring for or not. I can teach them to code, and I have a whole team with a whole culture that will teach them how to work the way we work, but I probably can’t teach them to give a crap.

So, instead of spending your time interviewing hundreds of candidates, spend your time building an organization with a culture that will make them into what you need. Hire the developer today, I say, and train them subsequently.