How to hire programmers | Chris Lattner and Lex Fridman

Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Chris Lattner: Future ...
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GUEST BIO:
Chris Lattner is a legendary software and hardware engineer, leading projects at Apple, Tesla, Google, SiFive, and Modular AI, including the development of Swift, LLVM, Clang, MLIR, CIRCT, TPUs, and Mojo.
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[@LexClips]

Full podcast episode: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ppWtgmufi7mqoJo Lex Fridman podcast channel: kzbin.info Guest bio: Chris Lattner is a legendary software and hardware engineer, leading projects at Apple, Tesla, Google, SiFive, and Modular AI, including the development of Swift, LLVM, Clang, MLIR, CIRCT, TPUs, and Mojo.

[@liam3284]

You don't hire 10x programmer, you become the place that makes 10x programmers. Most of that is giving people time and space to learn something. There is such a drive in this industry for productivity at the expense of professionalism.

[@haakoflo]

The only way to get a 10x programmer is to hire someone with the potential to be a 10x programmer. Depending on your benchmark for "x", that limits you to something between 1-10% of available candidates. And 10x is not even close to the ceiling in terms of productivity. Some individuals can produce 100x or even 1000x the value of the median programmer under ideal conditions. And people like Linus Torvalds break even that scale. Once you do have people with the level of talent we're talking about, then definitely, it requires good managment to leverage that. Still, people who need "time and space to learn something" probably will never be the "10x" programmers. Under ideal conditions, they may go from 1x to 3x. Or from 0.2x to 0.6x. The top end tends to pick up new stuff so quickly most people get the impression they already knew it from before. The main challenges of people with this kind of potential, is more about abilty for teamworking, communication and motivation.

[@RakeshA-eq3dw]

​@@haakoflo there are always exceptions.

[@markhampton3614]

Like in sport, you just need time to compete in the Olympics, anyone can get there.

[@yeetdeets]

@@markhampton3614 That's just plain false. Some people are gifted, most of us are not. Hard work beats talent, but hard working talent blows everything else out of the water. People like Phelps, Bolt and Jordan are simply built different. There are people who work just as hard and don't get the same result - you just don't know about them due to survivor bias.

[@markhampton3614]

​@@RakeshA-eq3dw So there are not always exceptions.

[@JMo268]

One thing I notice about everyone being remote now is when someone is failing in a presentation or completely missing their audience there used to be a lot of different ways to get that feedback during the presentation and adjust on the fly. I was in a Teams meeting the other day where the client side (dozen people) were expecting a moderately technical presentation and instead was receiving a 30 minute nonstop governance presentation that wasn't technical at all. And it wasn't communicated to the presenter until they got to Questions. And politely communicated that they completely missed the mark. It made a disaster out of what could have been a salvageable presentation if it had been done in person. When we used to go onsite we kept presentation decks with a hundred slides but only intended to show a few. We kept such a large number available so we could adjust to what the customer wanted to talk about and completely change course mid stream.

[@Valenth1337]

Why aren't you checking expectations and goals of the presentation ahead of it with the customer? It's not that difficult

[@michaelbarbarelli3764]

@@Valenth1337 Good point, but I think OP was saying that given this error, it could have been corrected in person.

[@RickeyBowers]

The medium of communication should also modify the communication. Distance means checking with the audience more frequently - to see who is present, their level of understanding and their expectations.

[@MrSongsword]

HR: "There are like 100 people who have worked with the full tech stack you're asking for." Business: "Great, let's hire one of them." HR: "90 of them work for you." Business: "And the other 10?" HR: "Worked for you."

[@fred.flintstone4099]

Good point on hiring a team with different people with different strengths. We have a small team where my co-workers are good at understanding the business domains and are good at delivering value, but they have often have no understanding of the security and performance implications. I bring the least value to customers, but I port and migrate our software from end-of-life frameworks and libraries to new supported ones, I assist my coworkers and have an intuitive understanding of how things works and in-depth technical knowledge.

[@dark.prnx.]

You seem like a nice coworker to have.

[@aguluman]

​@@dark.prnx. i agree.

[@SPQProductions]

Thanks for sharing! Great interview and perspective!

[@thesoftwareman]

Big companies like to hire generalists, and thus use standardized tests for their interviews (e.g. Leetcode). Easier experience for candidates to gamify that interview process, then go for bigger companies with bigger comp. Makes it very difficult for startups looking for specialized skillsets to compete and hire those folks. But yeah with Meta's recent 3 day in office per week mandate, remote-first is a great way to compete.

[@DavidJBradshaw]

Having done a lot of remote work, getting the team together for a couple of days every month is incredibly useful. But beyond that the returns diminished very quickly

[@techwithdave]

⁠@SneezingScallion the problem with fully remote is it causes lots of fighting that goes way beyond the typical fighting you see in workplaces. I’ve always found that people are leas likely to scrap when they have to be face to face.

[@hellowill]

yup I love remote but could never do fully remote. Need to see people once a week (even if its just for lunch). Once a month would be the minimum.

[@curious_one1156]

depends on the project. Fully remote work hinders cooperation.

[@Meleeman011]

your job sounds nice, you looking for any new developers?

[@katatchoi5633]

Time zone difference in remote work is a collaboration advantage. It relays brain works within full 24h.

[@Landon_Hughes]

Thank you to Chris for creating my favorite programming language, Swift! ✊

[@davido6170]

Situational leadership leads to a good work culture

[@zacharychristy8928]

The best heuristic for deciding whether you're working on the right thing is whether or not it provides VALUE to someone. Doesn't matter if you're 10% faster than the competition, or your codebase follows some arcane standard, if you are not working on something that will be valuable to customers, other programmers, or yourself, you are very likely just wasting your time.

[@dsk805.]

I look up to you, and I appreciate your work. Please keep being you dude

[@franko8572]

Thank you, will do! 😃

[@JordiB.E.]

Seems like in the early days of apple Steve Wozniak cared and started with the tech building it for himself and caring on every peice of the board he was making but Jobs later did say to start with what the user actually wants. I believe its almost a balance and not black or white.

[@elclay]

Lex asks a question, interrupts and diverges the topic, I hope he understands that keeping on the lane is fundamental

[@mateuszputo5885]

I mean as much as I like Lex he clearly has an agenda and mostly seeks to confirm it. In good'ol days of AI interviews he was less biased.

[@nicktendocreep]

just a question cause Im going to school right now and kinda lost. do you think when hiring programmers would you hire a programmer with a Associates in Computer science over a Associates in Applied Science?

[@Fatfit2]

I love working remotely and meeting in person for team night, events and outings. I get closer to my coworkers during happy hours lol

[@shaggyfeng9110]

I have never seen Chris Lattner rant about anything. He always mentions so many positive things.

[@MrGuardianX]

So what you are saying that I can go work in your company and do whatever I like? Since Im great no one should tell me what to do?

[@myhappygecko2895]

You have to have some in-person time.. it doesn't need to be every day or even every week but it needs to happen. That spontaneous time is so important. I till miss whiteboards and hope to get back to it, just need everyone in the office at the same time.

[@mosmo618]

so no answer?

[@user-xm9if5tu2v]

3:16

[@vicentefeced5889]

Remote first always. Offices are only for extroverts

[@TT-ez3hr]

That guy kind of looks like Sheldon from the big bang theory

[@kartik7544]

Facts

[@troyhamilton1889]

I’m sure that mojo will be used as a niche language like matlab and c++ will still be king 20 years from now. There is just no way that any other language can compete with c++ in any meaningful measurement.

[@devon9374]

Why not? You don’t have faith in these upcoming developing languages? C++ is amazing today but language evolution is important for our future. Let me know your thoughts.

[@damn_right_man8606]

I did not expect this low level of conclusion

[@ericpmoss]

10x sounds great but I’d put up with a team of 2x programmers who all put in the time to make something elegant. But, I’m talking as a programmer, not the money guy who doesn’t care if everyone gets used up.

[@pranavkashif]

Lex, Next Mo gawdat

[@liam3284]

Companies in my experience fail to understand the value of non promotable tasks and internal services. You know this every time you make a call to one for support. At work look at who is looking after the place, who lets in couriers, reports busted lights or HVAC and follows up, stacks or unloads the dishwasher...

[@liam3284]

For developers specifically, is anyone writing technical manuals, or documentation, who works on in-house tools?

[@george_davituri]

🙂

[@mgordon1964]

What is modular

[@Optimistas777]

Company that created mojo programming language

[@kartik7544]

Bringon the facts

[@jakeoverflow]

“How do you find someone who is a specialist in literally every CS related field?”

[@abnormal010]

It is impossible to become a specialist in every CS related field.

[@YiGzit]

Yeah lol that’s why the first comment was sarcastic

[@snitox]

tldr have a culture of inclusiveness where you are open to explore each other's differences.

[@rj3654]

Why this dude talk so slow 1.5x is perfect

[@h.g.1409]

8:23 awkward

[@mateator25]

he just said filler words... every company says it has a good culture

[@UnfiItered]

I feel like software engineer shouldn't be gatekept with certs and degree. It should just be a plus if you have that. Should probably have a real world test for hiring day.

[@NewYork81983]

Hmm I wonder how much 99% of Apple's customers care about how thin the laptops are, versus fixing problems they actually care about. Or how about removing external ports. What part of that was doing what the customer cares about lol

[@BrotherCheng]

If you talk to most people (aka not just the people who obsessively read spec sheets), they absolutely care about how thin and light a laptop is. It's usually the first thing they notice about a laptop in say Best Buy and is in fact the most defining feature of a laptop (since it's something you usually carry, hold, and feel daily). Would you use a huge laptop that weights 8 lbs like those we find 20 years ago? I thought not. Apple's laptops (esp the MacBook Pro lines) aren't even the lightest anyway. There are ultrabooks that are lighter. The MacBook Air in particular is still iconic exactly because when it was announced, it was so light and thin.

[@ZatoichiRCS]

Get rid of the finance / accountants. Get rid of managers. Leave only the engineers and technicians.

[@abnormal010]

wrong idea

[@bennymountain1]

Nice. Let the engineers fight for their share of income and then get arrested by the IRS, genius.

[@ZatoichiRCS]

@@bennymountain1 Engineers will be more than fine and time to get rid of a whole class of ZERO add people. Besides riding our coattails it’s better for results and efficiency. We don’t need masters.

[@bennymountain1]

@@ZatoichiRCS Look at mr rebel over here. Finance and accountants aren't your masters. Just because you don't know what they're doing over there doesn't mean they add "ZERO".

[@archmad]

This guy’s example about Apple is just wrong. Let’s talk about failed products then.

[@kristiformilchev6417]

We are remote first company. Translation: Dodgy blokes that don't like paying taxes and benefits .