Reading 01 — The Ethos of the Computing Industry

The proof is in the code. The tech industry is one of the few where you can’t get to the top by bullshitting, and if you do it won’t last long, just look at Theranos. The tech industry is fuelled by big ideas but thrives on results. If there is one principle that is consistent across all of the major tech companies, it is the value they place on technical competence. It is amazing when you consider the amount of CEOs with technical backgrounds who didn’t study business management or finance, but operate under the prerogative that if the tech is good, the money will follow, almost to a fault.
Timothy Lee’s article on meritocracy raises a good point differentiating between the “meritocracy” of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. The tech space is evolving so fast and most products are so easily copied that there is an extreme emphasis placed on iteration and constant improvement of offerings. Facebook’s motto of “move fast and break things” is grounded on the assumption that they can hire people talented enough to move fast. They do it so well that they recently began copying and incorporating features from Snapchat into Instagram in an attempt to siphon off users by imitating functionality. With constant code and performance reviews, the top companies want to make sure they constantly have the best and brightest on their teams. While Facebook is just one company, its motto is translatable to a general one that encapsulates the ethos of the whole industry: Hire the brightest and let them do their thing.
Good coders produce good tech, great coders produce great tech… theoretically. I had three separate interviews for my first internship, and 90% of my time in those interviews was comprised of writing code on a whiteboard. No matter how well you can talk your way through an HR screening, once you’re in a room one-on-one with a marker and a problem, there’s no fudging your way through it. Companies try to make the interview process as rigorous as possible, but once inside, the goal is to create an environment that allows coders to do their thing. Free food, relaxed dress code, ping pong, companies will provide anything that they think will enable employees to produce the most code while maintaining a high level of job satisfaction so they don’t defect to a competitor with a bigger game room. A side effect of the emphasis on technical merit is the pampering of technical employees. While companies do this to project themselves as the most desirable employers for top talent, it distracts from the original goal because employees might be drawn to a company not because of a desire to work on the product, but to work in that environment, which may result in uninspired work.
Meritocracy is great in theory, but there is more to being a successful employee than algorithms and good code practices. The majority of a developer’s time is spent communicating with teammates and management. Soft skills are the lynchpin in a successful development machine. A massive engine is pretty useless if you accidentally build square wheels. This is especially important in relation to the hiring of technical managers. Every tech exec should read about the Peter Principle before promoting a rockstar developer to a managerial role. The problem with being a blanket “meritocratic” company is tech companies aren’t just guilty of this with their technical talent, but their business teams as well. The worst thing you can do is promote someone who is great at their job to another role that they are not suited for. Case and point: Steve Ballmer.