Happy Birthday, Aaron Schwartz

When you hire a programmer (and indeed anyone, for that matter), you have three questions. Is he smart? Can you do what you need? Can you work with him? One who is smart but unable to complete the task may be your friend, but not an employee. You can discuss your problems with him, while he will delay with the performance of important work. The one who is able to carry out tasks, but is inept, is inefficient: stupid people do the work in a laborious way, work with them progresses slowly and is full of disappointments. Well, with those with whom you cannot work, you simply cannot work.

The usual procedure for hiring a programmer consists of: a) reading a resume, b) asking some difficult questions over the phone, and c) setting a programming task for them in person. I think such a system of hiring people is terrible. You can learn very little from the resume, and difficult questions during the interview are very nervous for people. Programming is not the kind of work that is done under pressure, so it’s pretty pointless to watch the actions of people who are nervous. And questions for interviews are usually selected on the principle of "the harder, the better." I think I'm a tolerable programmer, but I never went through such interviews, and I doubt that I could do it at all.

Therefore, when I hire someone, I just try to answer the three questions described above. To find out if a person is capable of doing the right things, I just ask what he has already done. If a person is really capable of doing work, by this moment he should have done something. It is difficult to be a good programmer without any work experience, and now anyone can gain experience by participating in some kind of project to create a free program. Therefore, I just ask the person for an example of code and a working program and see if it looks good. So you can really learn a lot, because you do not observe how he answers a far-fetched question during an interview - you look at the code that he actually gives out. Is it concise? understand? elegant? practical? Would you like to have something like this in your project?

To find out if a person is smart, I just have an informal conversation with him. I try to do everything to relieve any tension - I make an appointment in a cafe, explain that this is not an interview, I do everything to be informal and friendly. Under no circumstances do I ask him standard questions from the interview - I just chat with him as I would chat with someone at a party. (If at parties you ask people to name their strengths and weaknesses or calculate the number of piano tuners in Chicago, you have big problems.) I think in a casual conversation it's pretty easy to find out if a person is smart. I constantly evaluate the mind of the people I meet, just as I constantly evaluate their attractiveness.

But if I had to write down signs of why someone seems smart to me, I would focus on three points. Firstly, how deep is his knowledge? Ask what he’s been thinking about lately, and “probe” him on this subject. Does he seem to have a detailed understanding of the subject? Can he clearly explain it? (Clear explanations are a sign of genuine understanding.) Does he know something about an object that you don’t know?

Secondly, is he curious? Does he ask you questions in response? Is he really interested or just trying to be polite? Does he ask additional questions to what you say? Do his questions make you think?

Third, is he studying? At some point in the conversation, you might be explaining something to him. Does he really understand what you are saying, or is he just smiling and nodding? There are people who have knowledge in a small field, but are not interested in other issues. And there are people who are curious, but not learning, they ask a lot of questions, but they don’t really listen. You need one who is both one and the other and the third.

Finally, I determine if I can work with the person just by spending some time with him. Many prominent people seem delightful in the first hour of communication, but after a couple of hours their eccentricity begins to annoy. So when you finish a casual conversation, invite him to lunch with the rest of the team or to a game in the office. Again, try to make everything as informal as possible. The goal is simply to understand whether it will get on your nerves.

If everything looks good and I’m ready to hire a person, common sense speaks of the need for a final check to make sure that I wasn’t fooled somehow: I ask him to do part of the work. This usually means that he should write some more or less independent piece of code that we need. (If you really really want to see how he works under stressful conditions, set a deadline for him.) If necessary, you can offer him to pay for this work - although I noticed that most programmers are not averse to performing a small task, if they can then make the source code open. This test does not work on its own, but if someone has passed the first three tests, it should be enough to prove that the person has not cheated on you, that he can actually do the work.

(I met people who say: “Well, okay, let's try to hire you for a month and see how it works.” It does not seem to work. If you can’t make a decision after finishing work on a small project, you don’t you can do this in a month, so it turns out that you are hiring a person who is not good enough. It’s better to just say “no” and look for someone better.)

I am quite happy with this method. When I stuck to it only partially, it ended with hiring the wrong people, who eventually had to leave. But when I acted according to this plan, I got people that I liked so much that I really really regret if I have to part with them. It's amazing how many companies instead use other, stupid hiring methods.

Source: How I Hire Programmers
Original: www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring

Information is power. But, as in the case of any force, there are those who want to
keep it for themselves. The entire world scientific and cultural heritage, published
over the centuries in books and magazines, is more and more digitized and
"locked up" by a handful of private corporations. Do you want to read materials reflecting the
most outstanding results of science? You have to send huge amounts to
publishers like Reed Elsevier.

And also there are those who are fighting to change this order. The Free
Access Movement bravely fought to ensure that scientists did not give their copyrights
to publishers, and instead their work would be published on the Internet on
conditions allowing anyone to have access to them. But, even in the case of a better
scenario, this achievement will relate to materials published in the future.
Everything that was up to this point will be lost.

This is too high a price. Forcing researchers to pay money for
reading the work of their colleagues? Scan entire libraries, but
only Google staff can read them ? Supply scientific articles to the elite universities of the countries of the
first world, but not children from the countries of the third world? This is outrageous and
unacceptable.

“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? Companies own
copyrights, they make a lot of money, getting them for access to
materials, and this is completely legal. We cannot stop them in any way. ” But,
nevertheless, something we can. Something that is already being done: we can resist.

People who have access to these resources - students, librarians, scientists - have been
given an advantage. You feed on this feast of knowledge while the
rest of the world sits under lock and key. But you should not, or rather, you do not have moral
rights to keep this privilege to yourself. Your duty is to share it with the world. And
you do this by exchanging passwords with colleagues, filling out download requests
for friends.

At the same time, those who are cut off are also not idle. You squeeze
through holes and climb over fences, freeing up closed by publishers
information and sharing it with your friends.

But all these actions take place in a dark, hidden underground. This is called
theft or piracy, as if to share wealth morally equate to the
sack of the ship and the killing of his crew. But sharing is not
immoral; it is a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed
will refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Large corporations are undoubtedly blinded by greed. This is required by the laws
according to which they operate. Their shareholders will rise if they receive less.
And the politicians they bought cover up them, skipping laws that give them
exclusive rights to decide who can make copies.

There is no justice in following unfair laws. The time has come to come out into the
world and, in the great tradition of civil disobedience, to proclaim our
resistance to this private theft of public culture.

We need to take information wherever it is stored, make our copies and
share them with the world. We need to take materials that are not covered by
copyright and add them to the archive. We need to buy secret databases
and upload them to the network. We need to download scientific journals and
upload them to file-sharing networks. We must fight for Partisan
Open Access.

With enough of us all over the world, we will not only send convincing
a message opposing the privatization of knowledge, we will leave this system in the
past. Are you joining us?

Aaron Schwartz

Eremo, Italy, July 2008

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

"During this time, that you watch TV," they say to me, "you would have written a new story." It’s hard to disagree - writing a story is, of course, a better use of free time than watching a TV show, but it’s not so simple, because it means that watching TV and writing a story are equivalent things, which, unfortunately, isn’t always like that.

Time has varying degrees of quality. If I ride the subway and find that I have forgotten my laptop, then a couple of paragraphs is all that I can squeeze. It’s also difficult to concentrate when you are constantly pulled. Well, and the psychological moment - sometimes you are inspired, full of motivation and willingness to work on something, and sometimes you feel such irritation and fatigue that you can do nothing but stare at the TV.
If you, however, want to increase your productivity, you must be clearly aware of such things and be able to cope with them. Firstly, your task is to get the most out of each time span. Secondly, you should try to improve the quality of your time.

Spend time efficiently

Choose good problems
Life is short (in any case, they told me so), so why waste it doing nonsense? Everyone can do something just because it is easy and simple, but you should always be careful in this matter: is there something that is much more important? Why did you start to do just that? It is difficult to answer such questions (in the end, this rule will lead you to the question “why don't I solve the most important problems in the world?”), But believe me, every small step in this direction will make you more effective.
It is clear that you are not obliged to solve problems of a universal scale all the time. Personally, I certainly don’t do that (at the moment I am writing this note), but this is the measure that helps me evaluate my life.

Have them in stock
Another common myth is that you need to choose one problem and focus only on it. It seems to me a little taut. For example, right now I am following my posture, pulling a dumbbell, drinking, cleaning the table, chatting with my brother and writing this post. Throughout the day, I will have time to work on this article, read a book, eat, reply to several letters, chat with friends, go to the store, edit a couple of articles, make a backup copy of the contents of my hard drive and correct my list of books. Last week, I worked on several IT projects, read several books, spent time learning a couple of programming languages, made a permutation, and so on.

When there are several tasks, there is always something to do in any period of time of any quality. Plus, if things get stuck or you get bored, you can take on something else (and this will give you time to tune in to solve the original problem).

In doing so, you become a more creative person. Creativity lies in the fact that you can apply the lessons learned from some projects to others. If you have many tasks, good and different, then later on you will have many ideas in your arsenal.

Make a list
Defining a circle of tasks is usually an easy task - most people have a bunch of things to do. But keeping all of them in mind is often an overwhelming task. Psychological pressure from the fact that all this must be remembered will drive anyone crazy. The solution is simple: write them down.

With this list of tasks, you can start sorting them by type. For example, my list includes programming, writing articles, thinking, doing household chores, reading, listening, and watching notes (in that order).

The most important projects include a number of similar tasks. When writing this article, I also needed to read on the topic of other similar techniques, think about the organization of the article, work on the proofreading of its text, discuss it with other people, etc. - and all this as an addition to the actual writing of the text. Each task belongs to a certain type, so that you can begin to do it as soon as convenient time comes up.

Make it a part of your life
You already have a list - now you can start to look into it to restore in memory what needs to be done. The best way to teach yourself to browse this list is to make it catch your eye. For example, on my desk there is a whole stack of books, and on top are the ones that I am reading right now. When I need to read, I just grab the topmost book.

The same situation with the movies. When a movie appears that I must watch, I put it in a special folder on my computer. And every time I want to watch a movie, I just open this folder.

Moreover, I’m even thinking how to do it more intrusively. For example, to pop up a web page with a list of required articles, as soon as I start to climb blogs. Or even better - a pop-up window with suggestions for something to do, whenever I sit idle.

Improve the quality of your time

Using the allotted time all the way will already allow you to achieve more. A more important task is to improve the quality of time. Many people's lives are filled with things like school or work. Of course, doing these things, you temporarily stop doing others. What else can be done?

Reduce physical limitations

Carry a pen and paper with you
Almost all outstanding people have a pocket notebook that they carry with them everywhere. A pen and paper are extremely convenient, and in any circumstances - when you need to write a note to someone, make notes on some issue, sketch out an idea, and the like. I even managed to write whole articles in the subway.

(I did this before, but now I always take a smartphone with me. Yes, it doesn’t allow me to physically write notes to people, however, as a compensation, I always have reading (emails) on hand, plus I send notes right away to my email account, where I certainly will not forget about them)

Make sure that you are not pulled
For tasks requiring increased concentration, you must try to make sure that you are not pulled. The easiest way is to go where these nerds cannot find you. Another way to solve this is to conclude an agreement with people around you: “Do not touch me when the door is closed” or “Write me on ICQ when I sit in the headphones” (and then you will probably be able to ignore these messages until you are free).
And do not go to extremes. Sometimes, when time is wasted, you need to be interrupted. It would be better to help someone with his problems than to sit and climb blogs. Therefore, the conclusion of certain agreements is a good idea: you can be distracted when you are not particularly focused on work.

Reduce mental restrictions

Eat, sleep, exercise.
Moments when you are hungry, tired or jerked are poor quality times. It is easy to raise: eat, sleep and exercise. However, even I sometimes do not find for this time. I’m not a big fan of going for food, so I often continue to work, staying hungry, and in the end I get so tired that I simply don’t have the strength to “go and make myself some food”.

Great temptation to say to myself: "Yes, I'm tired, but you can’t sleep - there is still a lot of work." In fact, you will become much more productive if you still sleep, because your time will be better than if you remained sleepy.

I myself don’t really go in for sports very much, so maybe I’m not the best adviser in this matter, but I try not to miss the opportunity to stretch a little. When I lie down and read, I strain my abs. If you need to go somewhere on foot, I do a run.

Communicate with energetic people
Reducing mental restrictions is a little more difficult. The presence of friends full of energy helps in this difficult matter. For example, after talking with Paul Graham or Dan Connolly, I’m always very willing to work - because they just radiate energy. Sometimes it seems that to do the work you need to hide from people and lock yourself in your room, but this is very disorganizing, so this is not an option.

Load balance
Even if your comrades are not full of energy, like Energizer, working on a serious problem side by side with someone else is already much easier. Firstly, the mental load is divided into two. Secondly, having a colleague nearby will not let you kick the bulldozer.

Procrastination and the psychic force field
All these tricks are around and around. The biggest problem in efficiency is procrastination. This is such a small wormhole - everyone pulls the cat by the tail, and very much so. You are not the only one, but this does not mean that you can put up with it.

What is procrastination? For an outside observer, it looks like this: you just do something “cool” (like shooting games or reading blogs) instead of doing your job. (Often this fact forces an outside observer to conclude that you are bad and lazy). Question: What happens inside your head?

I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of all this, and I can explain it in a way that the brain sets up something like a psychic force field around a task. Ever played with a pair of magnets? If they are turned as it should and brought closer to each other, then they will be strongly repelled. Twist them a little - and you can grope the boundaries of the force field. When you try to mold them, the field will push them away or even scatter them in different directions.

Mental gag works about the same. It cannot be touched or seen, but its borders can be felt. The harder you get to work, the stronger the opposition. In the end, you just change the place of application of your forces.

Just as you cannot connect two magnets together, just crushing very hard - they will fly apart, as soon as you stop reaping - you can’t overcome the psychic force field by force of will. Here you need to take the trick - you just need to flip the magnets.

What determines this mental force field? Two main factors come to mind: is the task difficult and is it planned.

Difficult tasks

Divide into parts
The first type of difficult task is too big a task. For example, you want to create an application for organizing recipes. Few people can just sit down and make such an organizer. This is a goal, not a task. The task is one specific step that you can take to achieve the goal. A good example of a top priority is to “sketch out a screen layout when displaying a recipe.” This is what you really can do.

When you do this, as a rule, the next step becomes obvious. You will need to decide what parts the recipe consists of, what functions are needed for the search interface, how to organize the recipe database, etc. You move forward, the next follows from each task.

For each of my large projects, I think over all the upcoming tasks and put them on the todo list (I wrote about this earlier). When I stop working, I put in the todo-list the possible next steps.

Simplify
The next type is too complicated or complicated task. To write a book sounds discouraging, so start with the essay. If this is too complicated, make a brief summary. The most important thing is to do at least something right now.

When you already have something, you can find the best solution, comprehend the task. In addition, it’s easier to make adjustments to something real than to start from scratch. If the compendium went well, it can result in an essay, and then in a book, step by step, piece by piece.

Think about the task
Often the key to solving a complex problem lies in a breath of inspiration. If you are not very aware of the subject area, obviously, you need to start with research - see how others do it, start to “feel” the territory. Get a common vision of this area of ​​activity. Solve a couple of smaller problems to make sure you have a hand.

Scheduled Tasks
Scheduled tasks are the tasks you were told to do. Numerous experiments have shown that when you try to “stimulate” people to do something useful, they tend to do it less willingly, and the quality of work leaves much to be desired. External stimuli, such as bonus or punishment, kill in the bud what psychologists call "internal motivation" - your genuine interest in the task. (This is one of the most discussed discoveries of socio-psychology - more than 70 works confirm that prizes reduce interest in solving the problem.) It seems that deep hatred towards pointers sits deep in human nature.

What is strange - this phenomenon extends not only to other people; the same thing happens when you indicate what you need to do yourself! If you say to yourself, “I need to work on X, this is the most important thing at the moment,” then suddenly X will become a task, making myself work on which is the most difficult thing in the world. However, as soon as Y becomes the most important task, the same X goes much easier.

Change goals.
The most obvious solution: if you need to work on X, tell yourself to work on Y. Unfortunately, this is the case when it is difficult to consciously fool yourself, because you still know the real state of things. Have to act stealthily.

One option is for someone to give you another assignment. The most common example of such a solution is graduate students who must write a dissertation - a kind of monumental work necessary for a successful graduation. And, to avoid this deplorable fate, they agree to do a bunch of other hard work.

Do not force yourself.
It is too tempting to say, “So, you have to put everything aside, sit down and finish writing the article.” It’s even worse to start using lures like “okay, if I’m finishing the article now, then I’ll go and eat the pie”. The absolute evil is to arrange so that someone else urges you to work.

All this is very tempting - I will do everything myself! - but in fact this leads to the opposite results. In all three cases, you simply entrusted the work to yourself. Now your brain will do everything to avoid its implementation.

Make entertainment from work
Hard work is not entertainment by definition, we have already passed it. Nevertheless, this is perhaps one of the most pleasant things that I have to do. The point is not only that the solution to a complex task completely draws you in for the whole time that you are solving it, but also that at the end of the Big Cause, the body of pleasure spreads over the body.

The secret to productivity is not in convincing yourself that the work needs to be done, but in convincing that it is fun. If it’s not fun, then you have to make it that way.

The first time I seriously thought about it when I needed to write essays in college. To write an essay is not a tricky business, but a planned one. Who in their right mind would voluntarily write essays in a couple of pages long along the text of two random books? Then I thought to turn the writing of essays into some kind of comic experiments. In one of them, I decided to write each paragraph in my own style, making every effort to imitate certain styles of speech (a free bonus - this allowed me to pour more water).

Another way to make entertainment work is to transfer the task in a different direction. Instead of creating a web application, try creating a framework for web applications, including the original application as an example. The task will become not only more interesting, but the result will become more useful.

Conclusion

There are many myths about productivity - time is the same, concentration drives, flirting with oneself is effective, hard work is unpleasant, and pulling a cat by the tail is unnatural, but they all have a common leitmotif: the concept of real work as something that goes against yours natural inclinations and desires.

And maybe this is the case - for most people in most professions. There is no reason why you should want to write boring essays or make useless notes. But if the public requires you to do this anyway, you must learn to turn off the voice in your head that tells you to stop!

If you do something worthwhile and creative, shutting up your inner voice is not our method. The real secret of performance is just the opposite: to hear the call of the body. Eat when hungry; sleep when tired; take a break when bored; work on projects that seem cool and interesting.

Everything seems too simple. No fancy acronyms, self-determination, or recommendations from successful businessmen are needed. This is almost common sense. But the social concept of labor pushes us in the opposite direction. If we want to become more productive, all that is required of us is to turn around.

Translation: Alexander Skakunov
Original: www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity