I didn't used to think so.
I'm less cynical now.
It all depends on where you want to work, and what you want to do.
Ask HN: Can a software engineer help change the world?
51–55 of 55 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can a software engineer help change the world?
#52I hate to admit this as an engineer, but the people who make a difference are working at the strategy level and not the implementation level, which is where most of us engineers spend our time. No world-changing startup ever failed because "we couldn't get the code right" -- they fail because they build things the world doesn't want, or they fail to market the things they build to people who want them. The second dif…
I think you're a bit off base about the implementation level not making much of a difference compared to the strategy level. Have you never seen engineers essentially fail at building a spec because they couldn't implement something well enough? I've seen a team of full stack developers build an ambitious web UI with lots of complicated data visualizations/animations/interactions/etc. There were tons of performance i…
> Have you never seen engineers essentially fail at building a spec because they couldn't implement something well enough?
I've seen engineers fail at a task. I've never seen an entire startup fail because of bad engineering -- they fail because they don't have paying customers, and the lack of paying customers is usually not because "our app doesn't work just right." Users will keep using clunky apps that solve a real problem for them, but they abandon apps that don't solve a real problem.
> He keeps coming up with these ideas that are actually pretty decent, but he tries to build them himself (he's self taught but still doesn't really know what he's doing) and what he ends up with are things no one would ever, ever use twice.
That seems beside the point, doesn't it? We're not talking about whether implementation is completely unimportant, merely that the biggest lever is strategy (the idea itself, the marketing, the leadership that makes decisions about how to reach product-market fit) and not implementation. Let's say your friend is actually a semi-decent engineer. Would his app be 10% better if he were a 10% better engineer? Probably not. Yelp is ugly as sin but people keep using it because it solves a real problem. Tinder chat is broken beyond belief but people keep using it because it solves a real problem. Those companies have reached success through strategy and not implementation. You could make Yelp or Tinder 10% better from an engineering perspective, but that's not going to produce a 10% increase in users... I'd be surprised if it produced any growth in users at all actually.
Re: Ask HN: Can a software engineer help change the world?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm saying that man wouldn't have set foot on the moon without John F. Kennedy declaring it would be so, but man would probably still have walked on the moon if the Apollo engineering team were slightly less skilled. (Probably would have taken longer and had more deadly failures, so thank God for the highly-skilled people who worked together to make it all possible, but engineering skill adds incremental improvement…
You don't think a bunch of astronaut deaths and costly mission failures would've eventually eroded public will?
A bunch of astronauts did die at the very beginning: Apollo 1 blew up on the launch pad. There was outrage in Congress but it died down because LBJ (a huge NASA supporter) used his (in)famous strong-arm political leadership to push forward. Again: strategy and leadership were more important than implementation. LBJ was more important for pushing Apollo forward than NASA's engineering success (or lack thereof).
Re: Ask HN: Can a software engineer help change the world?
#54The boring answer is that as long as you are making money, you can donate some to charity. Making lots of money and donating it to an effective charity is usually a more efficient way to change the world for the better than choosing a sub-optimal career trying to change the world by yourself. If you think you can be a good software engineer, you should go for it.
> Making lots of money and donating it to an effective charity is usually a more efficient way to change the world for the better than choosing a sub-optimal career trying to change the world by yourself. Been thinking about this as well, would love to hear any further thoughts on this. Following that same strain of logic, if I want to build a successful business, why not choose an optimal career and then hire someon…
> if I want to build a successful business, why not choose an optimal career and then hire someone to build the business for me?
That's what angel investors do, right? First they make lots of money and then they invest on other people's business.
Re: Ask HN: Can a software engineer help change the world?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're a bit off base about the implementation level not making much of a difference compared to the strategy level. Have you never seen engineers essentially fail at building a spec because they couldn't implement something well enough? I've seen a team of full stack developers build an ambitious web UI with lots of complicated data visualizations/animations/interactions/etc. There were tons of performance i…
> Have you never seen engineers essentially fail at building a spec because they couldn't implement something well enough? I've seen engineers fail at a task. I've never seen an entire startup fail because of bad engineering -- they fail because they don't have paying customers, and the lack of paying customers is usually not because "our app doesn't work just right." Users will keep using clunky apps that solve a re…
Not necessarily disagreeing, but I'd like to point out that you your logic is based largely off of survivor bias. You've never seen an entire startup fail because of bad engineering probably because they never get to the point of relevance necessary for you to have heard of them.
To use your example of yelp - it might not be a feat of engineering, but it's well engineered enough to not get in the way of the problem it solves.