Comment by edragoev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edragoev | Hacker News Reader

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Is this the common wisdom these days? Experienced software developers who are good at C++/Qt can't learn themselves to use C#/.NET? They have to be trained? And that's impossible to do?

If we are talking about full time employees - they should have been given the option to work with .NET if this is what they wanted.

Also - employees have to take responsibility for Nokia's previous strategy? Weren't you just talking about those employees like an easily replaceable cogs? Get rid of a few "C++/Qt"s and get a few new "C#/.NET" ones.

Regular employees are responsible for managing their own career not the company.

About Elop - his statement about the burning platform reminds me about the Léo Apoteker public announcement about dumping the PC division of HP. Even if we assume both decisions about new strategic direction were correct - the public announcements were not very helpful to say the least ...

-- 1) Implying that Elop is not competent or responsible because he fired the team rather than "talking to them" is ridiculous. It is the only sensible option. Qt developers are not .Net developers and retraining so many at one time is impossible. 2) Finding developers for Nokia's strategy won't be a problem. There are lots of .Net developers around. And I am sure more than a few would be interested in the mobile space.

"Is this the common wisdom these days? Experienced software developers who are good at C++/Qt can't learn themselves to use C#/.NET? They have to be trained? And that's impossible to do?"

1) Yes, common wisdom. 2) Experienced devs can learn anything if they want easily, what happens if they don't want to?. 3) Yes, a little 4) No is not.

It is more complex than than. Employees are people, and people are complex.

First there is a philosophical issue. The best c,c++, Qt programmers love Unix, and that's one of the reasons they work there. If you want to force them into Windows and .NET those people will take the door. It is not really difficult for them to find another job that needs c, c++ if they are great.

I know it sounds ridiculous from some mindsets who believe everything in life is money and he who pays is the master that could slave their serfs(suit's mentality) but geeks tend to be the more idealistic people I know.

Once the best programmers(best programmers could automate things and be more than 10x efficient than standard ones) are gone the entire system collapses.

> Employees are people, and people are complex.

Except c/c++/Qt programmers -- they're pretty simple to predict, apparently.

The best devs I know tend to accept challenges to learn new systems and do well whatever they're working with, even if there's a particular language/platform they love more than others.

Some aspects of a platform are not a challenge, just painful.

For instance say I am looking for a bit of text.

In *nix I have vi in which I can type "esc/foo." Now, before I can blink the I am at the first match. Hitting "/" goes to the next one just as fast. If I don't know what file to look at, grep will tell me quickly.

Visual Studio has a search function, but it's not regular expressions by default, will not work on all of the design surfaces, and requires going through several dialogue windows. Typically I have to put my hand on the mouse to get any results.

For some tasks platforms and tools can make a big speed difference.

However it is true people are complex and hard to predict.

Perhaps some c/c++/QT programmers when given a, a shiny new windows based development environment, may enjoy the extra time they spend searching through source code. Who knows?

Vim works fine on Windows.

It's not impossible but retraining 100+ developers in a new platform takes a lot longer than hiring a new team. And it is not just about knowledge but also culture and enthusiasm.

Can you not see how the clean slate approach where you leave behind all of the Linux/Qt/Symbian baggage could be appealing ?

It's not dissimilar from what happen with Apple's failed Copland project where a new team came in (NeXT), took control of a new OS/apps strategy and ultimately saved the company.

Why do you need to retrain developers? I'm certain that I've never had any corporate training outside of what jokes not to make, places not to touch others, and things not to give to anonymous (yeah, seriously). I've never undergone technical training through a career that has gone through at least a few pretty big companies (Omron, Abbott, EADS).

I can clearly see why this kind of thinking may be appealing to some people.

The question is - how is this clean break and leaving "the baggage" behind going work?

I can't stop thinking about this imaginary company:

They have Java/Linux based system that is not selling very well so they hire new CEO. The new CEO announces to the company's customers that the Java/Linux is "burning platform". He fires all 100 Java developers and hires 100 C#/.NET developers ...

Somehow I think this is not going to end up well ...

A competent CEO (or CTO) will try to sell the new platform to developers by pointing out the advantages. He would hire maybe 25 experienced .NET developers to replace the 25 developers that left because they believe more in Java/Linux in the long term. He may have to let 10 developers go because they just don't want to learn anything new ... You end up with a team that still has the business knowledge, is committed to moving to the new platform and has people with experience about it.

Meanwhile you still make money selling the Java application until you are ready with the .NET one.

Isn't this 101 common business sense?

-- Can you not see how the clean slate approach where you leave behind all of the Linux/Qt/Symbian baggage could be appealing ?

Fair enough. It does present an interesting scenario where there's suddenly an increase in good Qt developers in the market.

Since RIM is doubling-down on Qt for BlackBerry 10, it allows them to recruit experienced developers to help them. Maybe they can leverage it to pull off something similar to Apple with NeXT.

Here are some job postings:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QAwzH5I...

http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/17584

> It's not impossible but retraining 100+ developers in a new platform takes a lot longer than hiring a new team

So you don't get rid of them all.

I saw a team go from LISP to C++ in the space of a few months. Some people got disgusted and left, some people got disgusted and stayed (and we'd wished they'd left), but a surprising number prospered, hunkered down and shipped.

As long as you're in roughly the same domain (say, "phones") I imagine it's less expensive to keep most of a team around, deal with attrition, and hire in new folks to fill the cracks.

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