in reply to Initiative or otherwise?

Before reading everyone elses' replies I will give my .02 cents.

First:
Did you think Programmer B showed initiative but that Child B cheated?

There are parameters that I am going to assume to answer this question. In short, I feel that the child cheated simply because of one of my assumed paramters that he passed off others' work as his own which is plagiarism(sp?). I doubt that child B placed the names of the people whose code he used in his project.

I think both children showed initiative, really. They just showed different kinds of initiative. Child A definitely got more out of his effort than Child B.

Now, on to the programmers. In a professional environment programmer B did nothing different than what a lof of programmers do. The old cliche, "Don't re-invent the wheel" is used as justification. Also, the employer rarely cares how the project is done as long as the specs are fulfilled by the deadline. Most programmers who have an incling of honor give credit where credit is due within the comments of their code, including me. Programmer A will probably have gotten more out of his work, though. Programmer B definitely cut corners. Some would place him on a pedastal for his creativity. This is definitely a debatable subject. I think both should get credit; different kinds of credit, however. I have more respect for programmer A for putting his time, heart, and sweat into his work. If I were an employer, I'd be more interested in Employee A.

In short, the scenarios are not equal. The school has specific parameters for children to do their work (one of my assumptions) that, if not fulfilled, the work is incorrect. Employers have less stringent paramaters thus making the scenarios unequal in comparison. However, if the employer scenario had the same parameters as the school scenario then I would agree that Employee B cheated to get his work done and vice versa if the school scenario had a more relaxed set of paramters equaling that of the employer then child B certainly would not have been considered cheating.

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- Jim
Insert clever comment here...

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Initiative or otherwise?
by dws (Chancellor) on Jul 08, 2002 at 07:11 UTC
    I have more respect for programmer A for putting his time, heart, and sweat into his work. If I were an employer, I'd be more interested in Employee A.

    If I were an employer, I might favor a worker who would drop their weekend plans to prepare for a demo on short notice. Would I care whether they'd written the entire demo themselves, or that they'd used other code as a starting point? No, I wouldn't. Getting it done by Tuesday is good enough.

    I'm not an employer, but I have been a manager. As a manager, I would notice that B outperformed A, on the task of preparing a demo, by 3:1. If the call for action had come on 4pm on a Monday, B would be ready by Wednesday, while A was still pouring over manuals. And don't discount the possibility that B learns by looking over the code he's downloaded.

    People who believe that have to do it all themselves, even if they're learning while doing it, are not necessarily people I want on my teams. They tend to view everything as a personal test, and don't work well with others.

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      ...not to mention the fact that on Monday morning programmer A will probably be more stressed and frustrated, less relaxed and positive-looking (and thus less productive in the end) than programmer B ;-)

      cheers,
      Aldo 

      __END__
$_=q,just perl,,s, , another ,,s,$, hacker,,print;

      [download]
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[d/l]
        Not necessarely. Programmer A is happy looking and confident, knowing he will be finished on time to show the demo (and next month are the performance reviews). Programmer B on the other hand is stressed, not having looked into the problem yet, and having no clue whether he will have a demo or a pink slip the next day.....

        Abigail

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        I think the opposite would be the case. B is the one who has nothing on his hands yet come Monday morning - and he knows he has little time left and needs something to work off of soon, if he is to meet the deadline.

        Programmer A's state depends mostly on the progress of his mental design. If he has a fairly accurate idea of his approach, his motions will be relaxed and confident.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

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      Thus proving my point about what the employer cares about. On the other hand, on a personal level which would you have more respect for?

      Frankly, I don't mind either one. Even as a manager I'd probably take either one. However, if I had to go to one or the other (supposing both are on my team) for some kind of difficult task with no deadline I'd probably go to A. I'd have more respect for A as a pure troubleshooter, though.

      B *could* get your company in trouble. If B slapped together some program with other peoples' code and that code got out to the public and by happen-chance that code was recognized by someone who knew who the author was and there was no credit in the program toward that original author *and* there was a copyright on that code....whoops; lawsuit. And not only a lawsuit but a lawsuit against your company. Now how valuable was employee B? Heh, of course, this is far-fetched (there were a lot of "and"s in my example). But its possible. Shoot, people get hit by lightning! :)

      Admittedly, I am arguing for the sake of arguing, now. However, I don't totally agree with your final statement. You are being very generalistic and I would agree with you if your statement were more narrow pointing. I think you are right till you state they tend not to work well with others. That is simply too broad of a statement for my comfort. Everybody on my team is the kind of person who likes the challenge of solving problems with their own mind and work. I rarely see code from people here who don't write their own code originally. They are all quite easy to get along with except my manager...heh. The same goes for my co-workers of past employers. Im not saying you are wrong but in my experience I haven't seen a wide range of people fitting your statement.

      I am definitely more like person A than I am like person B. The reason? Well, everything is a challenge. What's more is that I get great satisfaction out of solving complex problems with my own mind. I am satisfied by creating something that people will be able to use, often. I take pride in my work. I like other peoples' work too...for the sake of learning. However, I still prefer to learn how to do things myself. I rarely cobble code together. If I do use code that isn't mine its a module from CPAN or some other "official" module or script. This way, I am not re-inventing the wheel but I am giving all the credit to the people who originally made that code available for my use.

      I suppose I am seeing this whole thing from a different eyeglass than you. I also believe that person A will be able to troubleshoot his work faster and more reliably than person B thus making maintenance (which is always necessary) something to consider in these scenarios.

      _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
      - Jim
      Insert clever comment here...

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