I am a developer with a passion for testing. I've been coding for 14 years and I want to share my experience and learnings with other developers to help them write better software.
This is a good article, and I absolutely agree with the concepts you are driving at, I'm just not sure "failure tolerant" is quite the right term for this.
Failure is bad as far as I'm concerned, and I try to avoid it, easier said than done of course... I am though failure intolerant in my approach to software development.
What I think you're really looking for in developers, and what your post alludes to, is:
Desire to learn.
Perspective.
Communication.
When I've hired developers I look for people who are almost relentless in their approach to learning and who can understand the wider context within which they are working. These developers have perspective and they know it's not just a code problem. And the really great developers are the ones who can communicate well and have soft skills.
None of this is to say the "f**k up fast" approach as I like to call it is a bad thing. It's just it often comes from a bad place. I often advise developers and companies to fail fast and iterate because they have no interest in doing any domain discovery work. So I see fail fast as a way to quickly understand a domain without causing too much damage. Of course to do this you have to be failure tolerant, but I don't see failure tolerance and fail fast as things to aspire to. I see learning, perspective and communication as traits to aspire to and I think this is what your post is really getting at.
All things software & product, honestly - FrontEnd, BackEnd, DevOps, ML - as long as we're solving massive problems.
My code is used by millions of users globally - Potatoes make me happy
Hey Rob!
"Failure is bad as far as I'm concerned" you are absolutely right on this part. And while I agree the article reads to encourage this, I think what I was getting to was, the mindset shouldn't be to actively look to ways to fail haha but incase it happens, dust yourself - which is exactly what you said so you're definitely on the money!
" I look for people who are almost relentless in their approach to learning and who can understand the wider context within which they are working"
Yes this is so critical!
"It's just it often comes from a bad place." Agreed - the Valley mindset isn't the most effective, true!
" I see learning, perspective and communication as traits to aspire to and I think this is what your post is really getting at."
Nailed it!
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This is a good article, and I absolutely agree with the concepts you are driving at, I'm just not sure "failure tolerant" is quite the right term for this.
Failure is bad as far as I'm concerned, and I try to avoid it, easier said than done of course... I am though failure intolerant in my approach to software development.
What I think you're really looking for in developers, and what your post alludes to, is:
When I've hired developers I look for people who are almost relentless in their approach to learning and who can understand the wider context within which they are working. These developers have perspective and they know it's not just a code problem. And the really great developers are the ones who can communicate well and have soft skills.
None of this is to say the "f**k up fast" approach as I like to call it is a bad thing. It's just it often comes from a bad place. I often advise developers and companies to fail fast and iterate because they have no interest in doing any domain discovery work. So I see fail fast as a way to quickly understand a domain without causing too much damage. Of course to do this you have to be failure tolerant, but I don't see failure tolerance and fail fast as things to aspire to. I see learning, perspective and communication as traits to aspire to and I think this is what your post is really getting at.
Hey Rob!
"Failure is bad as far as I'm concerned" you are absolutely right on this part. And while I agree the article reads to encourage this, I think what I was getting to was, the mindset shouldn't be to actively look to ways to fail haha but incase it happens, dust yourself - which is exactly what you said so you're definitely on the money!
" I look for people who are almost relentless in their approach to learning and who can understand the wider context within which they are working"
Yes this is so critical!
"It's just it often comes from a bad place." Agreed - the Valley mindset isn't the most effective, true!
" I see learning, perspective and communication as traits to aspire to and I think this is what your post is really getting at."
Nailed it!