Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#191

Post by 29athrowaway » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

tjr225 wrote: post #170

29athrowaway wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 10x engineer identifies common subproblems across different problems, and then creates a layer of reusable code which becomes a library. Then uses this library to write code 10x faster. The 10x engineer tries to standardize problems and solve them en-masse. The 1x engineer sees every problem as a different problem that requires a different solution. The 10x engineer talks about abstractions, the 1x engineer talks…

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Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#192

Post by hayst4ck » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #183

hayst4ck wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True! But it might also grind the company's ability to release features to a halt creating a stagnant stock price and an underwhelming IPO because they chose to avoid the hard work of migrating, refactoring, and simplifying, or setting a culture of maintainable code preferring more easily marketable (and probably more fun and less failure prone) feature work that also looks much better on a resume.

Counterexample: Twitter. Every indication is that the code base was horrible. They found product market fit, got funding and went public. Amazon codebase was also famously barely held together by duct tape for the first few years

I'm not trying to say that you can't incur technical debt if you pay it off. What I am trying to say is that a culture of technical debt stagnates growth.

I would point to twitter as an example of the point I was trying to make, so I don't think it's a very good counter example:

  11/07/2013 $44.9 117,633,000 $45.1 $50.09 $44
  10/06/2022 $49.39 68,511,080 $50.98 $51.55 $49.29

Practically no sustained growth in almost a decade. Poor code and operations hampers the ability to prototype new features and destroys innovation.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#193

Post by tjr225 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #191

tjr225 wrote: post #170

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Hah! My car is even older than that. But it is still far more interesting than useless saas apps. Nice try though.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#194

Post by 29athrowaway » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:46 AM UTC

tjr225 wrote: post #193

29athrowaway wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Hah! My car is even older than that. But it is still far more interesting than useless saas apps. Nice try though.

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Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#195

Post by tjr225 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:48 AM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #194

tjr225 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! My car is even older than that. But it is still far more interesting than useless saas apps. Nice try though.

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Well if you honestly find the pointless complicated code you write for whatever stupid pointless startup more interesting than cars I guess maybe I just think you’re a moron? Wasn’t that the point of my original post???

I bike and walk more than you do by the way. Actually come to think of it my van has appreciated! LOL!

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#196

Post by icedchai » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:54 AM UTC

hayst4ck wrote: post #192

scarface74 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterexample: Twitter. Every indication is that the code base was horrible. They found product market fit, got funding and went public. Amazon codebase was also famously barely held together by duct tape for the first few years

I'm not trying to say that you can't incur technical debt if you pay it off. What I am trying to say is that a culture of technical debt stagnates growth. I would point to twitter as an example of the point I was trying to make, so I don't think it's a very good counter example: 11/07/2013 $44.9 117,633,000 $45.1 $50.09 $44 10/06/2022 $49.39 68,511,080 $50.98 $51.55 $49.29 Practically no sustained growth in almost a…

Yes, Twitter's stock has basically gone nowhere, just like its product. (I'm a TWTR bag holder. Hoping to get a pay out from Musk soon!)

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#197

Post by 29athrowaway » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 3:02 AM UTC

Olreich wrote: post #155

29athrowaway wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More often than not, it's people that care about how to create abstractions that amplify their productivity. That is only possible if they can spend some time building abstract stuff that cannot be explained to non-technical stakeholders, which is not possible with sweatshop engineering methodologies like Scrum, or when you promote the smiling bozos that completed their 5 person-minutes Agile crash course to manageme…

Abstraction is not a panacea. It's often the root cause of significant technical debt. Abstracting as late as possible is often the best course of action, as it give you more information about how to abstract from the initial implementation.

Yes, that's why it takes effort to learn how to properly create abstractions that solve more problems than they cause.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#198

Post by icedchai » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 3:04 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #167

marssaxman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't recall "staff engineer" being something people even talked about before ~2 years ago. It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously, seemingly out of nowhere.

The cynical view is that this role used to be called “senior engineer”. However due to title inflation, it needed rebranding, and “staff” is the new name.

I'd agree. Also, "architects" have also been rebranded as "staff" or "principal" engineers at some companies. (The cynical view is this because nobody architects a system with "agile", they just do what works for now and fix it in the next sprint.)

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#199

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 3:08 AM UTC

hayst4ck wrote: post #192

scarface74 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterexample: Twitter. Every indication is that the code base was horrible. They found product market fit, got funding and went public. Amazon codebase was also famously barely held together by duct tape for the first few years

I'm not trying to say that you can't incur technical debt if you pay it off. What I am trying to say is that a culture of technical debt stagnates growth. I would point to twitter as an example of the point I was trying to make, so I don't think it's a very good counter example: 11/07/2013 $44.9 117,633,000 $45.1 $50.09 $44 10/06/2022 $49.39 68,511,080 $50.98 $51.55 $49.29 Practically no sustained growth in almost a…

Do you really think it’s because of the software or because of the product? I bet no one has said that if only Twitters software was better it would gain more customers and advertisers.

All indications are that Twitters architecture is now top notch. There are entire sections of “Designing Data Intensive Applications” (the Bible for system design interviews) about Twitters current architecture.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#200

Post by 29athrowaway » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 3:09 AM UTC

tjr225 wrote: post #195

29athrowaway wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Well if you honestly find the pointless complicated code you write for whatever stupid pointless startup more interesting than cars I guess maybe I just think you’re a moron? Wasn’t that the point of my original post??? I bike and walk more than you do by the way. Actually come to think of it my van has appreciated! LOL!

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