Hey, this is Overpass Insights. My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, let's ask the question are you a chef or an instruction follower?
Right, so today, i'm coming to you from my kitchen
area right it was only a matter of time during lockdown i'm running out of
places to film and might as well do it in the kitchen right so
i'm over here cooking dinner i thought we could do a new segment on the channel
called overpass in the kitchen right we'll do recipe ideas i'll show
you guys how to cook things i think it'll be a nice change for the channel
right now actually i'm like not a very good cook i never have been
i just don't have the enthusiasm for it i know there's people out there who will
go out and you know they'll go to the grocery store
and they're like artists they put things together they you know
they know what everything tastes like i they're still vegetables but i don't
know what they are and i have to ask somebody at the supermarket
sorry what is what is it a scallion what is that you know i got it on my list
what is that right and they'll point me in the right
direction right that's how bad i am right
so and when i when i cook like so tonight i'm cooking i got uh
carrots uh sliced carrots i've got some mashed potatoes or some potatoes that
are boiling i'm going to be doing pork chops all
right so when i cook it's like i'm putting together ikea
furniture right i'm reading everything exactly like
uh-huh okay all right okay and i'm like and i'll do everything exactly like it
says there's no experimentation on my part there's nothing new there's
no creating going on because for me i've always thought of
cooking as being like a chore and it's just not something that i've really been
into right but but if you were to ask me
if i could cook i would say yes in fact i have cooked professionally
when i was 16 or 17 and 18 working in mcdonald's in san diego right
i was a professional cook right so if you were to say
ask me can you cook or if i was applying for a job and he said can you cook as
part of this job i would say of course i can well or i might
depending on whether yeah man i want to go for a job as a cook i would stop
where my skills like right well the reason i started thinking
about this is a lot of times when you're hiring a software developer
a lot of times you say can you do php and the answer
comes back as yes it's not necessarily the answer that
you want because what you should be asking is
how good are you at this language how good are you at this or
you know do you have you know do you have a a pension for this because
anybody could go through and follow a tutorial like a lot of things that we do
we do because we follow tutorials right even there's things that i do i'm
reading this i need to pack it on this stuff
right sometimes when you hire somebody as a software developer despite the fact
that they say yes they can do it yes they can do it for
pay yes they can do it professionally they're still following the instructions
directly right i know this because i've hired developers
and i go through and i look at it and i find code samples with variable names
that i can find directly on the web right they just copy paste it from
someplace else right if you're a software developer for any
uh length of time you know what this is like but that's
how everybody starts it's not it's not a bad thing to copy
other people's code right yeah that's how you learn it's like how
writers copy the styles of other writers until they find their own voice a lot of
times is that experimentation that works but you have to know that when you're
hiring somebody i get a lot of questions about hiring
people remotely hiring putting your team together uh and that's
a big distinct which this big distinction i would make it was like
are you hiring somebody who could follow instructions really well
like me or you know just someone you could tell them exactly what to do
and they'll do it or do you need somebody to create things
and just go away and do it right one of the things one reason i've been
well paid as a software developer is because i can get minimal instruction
and go away and just do it right because that's where my passions
lie that's where my experience lies that's where my
you know all that kind of stuff lies and it's something to think about if you
hire somebody and it's also a way to think about it if you're branding
yourself right if you're branding yourself you're
going out for a job think about what are you going for
if you're going for a job where it means following instructions like i did when i
was at mcdonald's like it does today when i'm cooking this dinner
then you're not going to be paid as much as if you could go out there and create
something like somebody who could really properly cook
so anyway just some thoughts today uh you know it's yeah it's really i mean
i have to hire somebody right so the the reason i'm thinking about this is i have
to hire somebody right now not a developer i have to hire a
designer and it's just oh god i hate going through the process
i hate going through the process of wheeling out the
the the instruction followers versus the artists and the creators
but um anyway i hope you guys are having a good day
that is it for today i'll talk to you guys again next time