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Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

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Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#111

Post by stickfigure »

pmiller2 wrote: post #101
stickfigure wrote: post #51

I boil it down to two things: #1 Rapidly Climb Learning Curves The ability to quickly learn enough about new subjects to be useful. New technologies or APIs; new algorithms; mathematical or statistical subjects; and most importantly, your problem domain. Some of this ability is a skill, "knowing how to learn", which covers google-fu, reading comprehension, prioritization, time management, etc. Some of this ability co…

That’s a rather poor attitude you have toward your colleagues if any of them dare suggest they need a little training.

"I need training!" says that you need to figure out how to make me good at this role. It shifts responsibility onto the organization; if I suck at the job, it's someone else's fault. A great engineer figures out what to do no matter how dysfunctional the organization.

It's not that it makes you a bad engineer if you can't thrive in an imperfect organization. All organizations are varying levels of imperfect. Great engineers figure out how to be great anyway.

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#112

Post by whelsemin »

ericb wrote: post #8

* Better googling. Time-restricted, url restricted, site restricted searches. Search with the variant parts of error messages removed. * Read the source of upstream dependencies. Fix or fork them if needed. * They're better at finding forks with solutions and gleaning hints from semi-related issues. * Formulate more creative hypothesis when obvious lines of investigation run out. The best don't give up. * Dig in to p…

> Dig in to problems with more angles of investigation

Can you elaborate?

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#113

Post by tetek »

aerovistae wrote: post #43
tetek wrote: post #3

1. Don't bitch about legacy software 2. Are willing to help with getting proper requirements 3. Don't need a JIRA task for everything 4. Don't say they are done if something is untestable 5. Are willing to do stuff other than their skill (eg. one of the graphics required for the project is too big, top engineer opens up gimp, resizes and continue. Bad engineer will report to manager that design team did shitty job, r…

> Bad engineer will report to manager that design team did shitty job, reassign JIRA ticket, write two emails and wait for new a graphic I hate this sentence so much. "Bad engineer"? Being a good or bad engineer doesn't come down to a single thing, ever. A lot of organisations, like mine, which is a well known public entity, REQUIRE this sort of operational procedure.

That was a poor choice of words from my side. Also, I have been writing this from my startup experience.

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#114

Post by tetek »

mtnGoat wrote: post #45
tetek wrote: post #3

1. Don't bitch about legacy software 2. Are willing to help with getting proper requirements 3. Don't need a JIRA task for everything 4. Don't say they are done if something is untestable 5. Are willing to do stuff other than their skill (eg. one of the graphics required for the project is too big, top engineer opens up gimp, resizes and continue. Bad engineer will report to manager that design team did shitty job, r…

Many things are not testable. Not sure I'd use that as a reason to judge someone down. In fact all the most productive teams I've worked on or with, don't have anywhere near full test coverage. The best had none in fact.

It isn't about test coverage, it's about feature completeness.

For eg. One feature require backend & frontend work, after a week of work engineer says that this is done. So you ask him to demo, and it turns out he is doing a backend demo with some dev tools.

From a product perspective nothing has changed. Top engineers understand, that no one cares that only one part is working, they know the end user and will not bother managers/product owners with partial solutions.

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#115

Post by ahartmetz »

ahartmetz wrote: post #69
sunasra wrote: post #39

1. Research & Finalize architecture design before jumping to code 2. Take code as documentation. This helps to debug things faster 3. Focus more on problem solving than language/tool priorities 4. Listens more and always towards exploring and experimenting new things. This improves breadth knowledge

1.5. Be willing to rethink the architecture when it turns out problematic. I have seen systems that probably looked good as a diagram before a line of code was written, but had to work around their own architecture with gross hacks. Architecture is important, but organizations employing "software architects" tend to be bad at software.

The second part may read as a non-sequitur. The connection is that in organizations that have separate architect roles, architects are shielded from their mistakes because they don't work on implementation, and their work usually isn't questioned.

The worst thing I remember is a web API where some call could fail but didn't tell you, it just gave you some kind of plausible looking inert data. The call to query system status was separate, so there was always a time of check / time of use problem. Also there was a transition period when the original call did return an error but the system status API didn't yet. Nobody (I hope) comes up with such a disaster while implementing and testing it.

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#116

Post by Scarblac »

stickfigure wrote: post #111
pmiller2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a rather poor attitude you have toward your colleagues if any of them dare suggest they need a little training.

"I need training!" says that you need to figure out how to make me good at this role. It shifts responsibility onto the organization; if I suck at the job, it's someone else's fault. A great engineer figures out what to do no matter how dysfunctional the organization. It's not that it makes you a bad engineer if you can't thrive in an imperfect organization. All organizations are varying levels of imperfect. Great en…

What if training is simply the most efficient way to get the required knowledge and it has nothing to do with the level of perfection of the organisation?

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#117

Post by _y5hn »

stickfigure wrote: post #111
pmiller2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a rather poor attitude you have toward your colleagues if any of them dare suggest they need a little training.

"I need training!" says that you need to figure out how to make me good at this role. It shifts responsibility onto the organization; if I suck at the job, it's someone else's fault. A great engineer figures out what to do no matter how dysfunctional the organization. It's not that it makes you a bad engineer if you can't thrive in an imperfect organization. All organizations are varying levels of imperfect. Great en…

Sometimes, it is completely justified: Taking on responsibilities, or just getting work done that should be done, requires time, efforts, followups, etc. While such work is often menial, it frees up the organization keeping systems alive and breathing, avoiding firefighting and hero-saving episodes later.

Then some manager tells you, "we need Kafka, can you provide our solution for that early next week?"

THEN, you say "I need training!" (necessitating relief from other duties).

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#118

Post by huffmsa »

jki275 wrote: post #93
haecceity wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that like marines?

There’s an old story about a Marine left alone in a room with two bowling balls for thirty minutes. At the end of the thirty minutes one bowling ball was in a bunch of little pieces scattered all over the room and the other one was pregnant.

In the Marine's defense, there was no bowling alley.

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#119

Post by BoiledCabbage »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #60

I can't recommend Gary Klein's Sources of Power enough, it is stuffed with awesome mental models, real life parables, research findings, and one quotable passage after another on expert decisionmaking. From the book, things experts do more/better/faster/etc than novices. * Identify patterns faster and successfully predict future events more often. * Recognize anomalies - especially negative anomalies i.e. something d…

All great advice - will have to check out the book

Re: Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

#120

Post by brianwawok »

Scarblac wrote: post #116
stickfigure wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I need training!" says that you need to figure out how to make me good at this role. It shifts responsibility onto the organization; if I suck at the job, it's someone else's fault. A great engineer figures out what to do no matter how dysfunctional the organization. It's not that it makes you a bad engineer if you can't thrive in an imperfect organization. All organizations are varying levels of imperfect. Great en…

What if training is simply the most efficient way to get the required knowledge and it has nothing to do with the level of perfection of the organisation?

Maybe, but it means the guy who can teach himself via google is going to get his similar project done a lot faster.
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