Over 30 years of professional experience. Currently at a FAANG. Just today I fixed a bug that the entire team couldn’t figure out, including our team lead who is brilliant who is 15 years my junior. I’m not a better programmer than he is but I pull my own weight. When I fixed the bug, I had a rush the entire day. 30+ years and I still love programming, and I feel blessed and grateful to have fallen into this career. It felt like divine, Godly intervention for the path that lead me here.
There are some things that I disagree with the author, most especially things like this:
> If you don't agree with this, I have no hope for you.
> When in doubt, choose different. If you exclude people based on them being unlike you, you will likely be choosing poorly.
He says he believes in diversity but contradicts himself a few sentences previous. I find this typical with a lot of people who claim to believe in diversity: they don’t actually believe in true diversity, they believe in people agreeing with their pre-existing beliefs. And if someone doesn’t agree, there’s no hope for them at least according to the author. That’s not someone who believes in diversity.
And I actually believe the greatest software projects have a single strong voice with a strong vision and strong competency that drives the entire project. Look at Steve Jobs with Apple and the iPhone, Linus and Linux, Elon Musk with Tesla, Zuckerberg and Facebook. You don’t find a lot of collaboration, what you see is a brilliant visionary with strong opinions and not much diversity in opinion. Too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say.
If you want a fun environment, then sure you can collaborate and give equal time to others but you won’t go as fast and usually the end results aren’t as dramatic.
You took his first statement out of context which made it worse than it sounds. Hell, I thought the author was an a-hole because I read your comment prior to reading the article.
He says human rights are important and treating other people well is the right thing to do and that's non-negotiable. Which is a fair statement. What decent human being would disagree with that?
He's right about having a diverse set of eyes and opinions on a team being a positive thing. But most people see the word "diversity" and think about the forced diversity quota of 'we need 1 black person, 1 gay person, 2 woman, one Latino and one Indian' kind of diversity, which speaking as someone from a minority, I too am against it.
> Human rights are fundamentally important. Treating other people well is the right thing to do. All of this is of paramount priority, whatever you do. If you don't agree with this, I have no hope for you.
He actually says that treating people well is morally right thing to do and the highest priority. That’s different from human rights which is the minimum that people should be treated. So I don’t think the “if you don’t agree” relates to the idea of human rights but rather that you should treat everyone as best as you can and consider that your highest priority. And if you disagree then he has no hope for you.
And this is the point. What if you believe that you should treat people “okay” not as best as you can, or not as your highest priority? What if you instead believe that you should give people freedom to do what they want no matter what the outcome is and not interfere in one way or another? Basically don’t treat anyone anyway and leave them alone?
That would produce unfettered success but also unfettered failure. What if you’re okay with some people utterly failing as long as some people have unparalleled success?
What if you’re okay with the idea of treating those who work hard very well, but ignore and don’t help anyone who is lazy or doesn’t work hard? Does that go counter to his idea that people should be treated well?
I don’t subscribe to these arguments but my point is that just because they don’t think treating everyone equally doesn’t mean that they are evil, they just have different priorities. A ceo like Steve Jobs would fire unproductive employees and reward productive employees, does that run counter to his argument of treating people well with the highest priority? And does he accept this diversity in thought or does he reject it?
In my home country, we have a saying: "No religion or politics in the bar." People who drink alcohol best avoid these as you end up in a fight sooner or later.
We also do this at work. I am here to do a job. Just keep it focused on the professional side. I don't need to be your best friend. Or share the same religion or political beliefs. At work, I come together to reach a common goal.
But that said, I hate people enforcing diversity for diversity's sake. They are actually introducing politics on the work floor.
I would be more careful using Steve Jobs as an example, the patents he infringed on (Ericsson, Nokia and another company, i do not recall the name off the top of my head) was what made the modern simpler smartphone possible (over 30 patents if i recall right) - so a strong lead/visionary - yes, a strong original programmer as the picture of him is drawn (from my limited knowledge - not so much).
Linus - who can disagree? Even though with years the will to break new ground decreases. Elon though humanity is indepted to him and he has shown that some people discarded by big data has alot to give he still isn't leading alone as the original programmer. Neither is Zuckerberg as far as i know (but I can admit I don't know enough about him or his history).
Visionaries - yes. Original lead programmers that lead by example and create original solutions to individual programming problems - not so much to my knowledge.
> He says he believes in diversity but contradicts himself a few sentences previous. I find this typical with a lot of people who claim to believe in diversity: they don’t actually believe in true diversity, they believe in people agreeing with their pre-existing beliefs. And if someone doesn’t agree, there’s no hope for them at least according to the author. That’s not someone who believes in diversity.
Yeah, I got weirded out by the person saying the creator covenant is something good.
Diversity of thought is what should be striven for (to a certain extent) rather than the much more common case of striving for diversity of superficial attributes.
Over the rest of the article though, the writer is actually talking about the former case.
An autocratic government where there is little diversity of opinion is the same, it can get things done quicker than a democrcy. Not that it's a good thing but velocity of execution is generally higher.
There are some things that I disagree with the author, most especially things like this:
> If you don't agree with this, I have no hope for you.
> When in doubt, choose different. If you exclude people based on them being unlike you, you will likely be choosing poorly.
He says he believes in diversity but contradicts himself a few sentences previous. I find this typical with a lot of people who claim to believe in diversity: they don’t actually believe in true diversity, they believe in people agreeing with their pre-existing beliefs. And if someone doesn’t agree, there’s no hope for them at least according to the author. That’s not someone who believes in diversity.
And I actually believe the greatest software projects have a single strong voice with a strong vision and strong competency that drives the entire project. Look at Steve Jobs with Apple and the iPhone, Linus and Linux, Elon Musk with Tesla, Zuckerberg and Facebook. You don’t find a lot of collaboration, what you see is a brilliant visionary with strong opinions and not much diversity in opinion. Too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say.
If you want a fun environment, then sure you can collaborate and give equal time to others but you won’t go as fast and usually the end results aren’t as dramatic.