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Street fighting engineers vs. martial arts engineers

ravitejakanta.substack.com

11–20 of 72 posts

Re: Street fighting engineers vs. martial arts engineers

#14
post #3

I kinda like this analogy, though the idea of street fighting is pretty unsavory in real life. Whereas Martial Artist in the article's analogy is like suburban children's Karate classes leading to later study for organized sports competitions and exhibitions. (BTW, IIUC, there are other kinds of study of martial arts, including people who focus on internal development separate from external accomplishments.) Even tho…

I don't know, I feel like a lot of these laudatory adjectives like "scrappy" and "street smart" are often just ways to excuse product owners, designers and execs making crappy decisions and throwing them over the wall to engineers to sort out. YMMV, of course.

Re: Street fighting engineers vs. martial arts engineers

#16
post #9

I feel like these aren't always personality traits, but rather often indicate the kinds of work environments one has been exposed to. I would characterize myself as more of a "Martial Artist" at heart. I find creating quality code gratifying for its own sake. I have an academic CS education. The majority of my early career was spent at a mature organization with lots of process in place and a reputation for engineeri…

Nailed it.

There are actually more pitfalls than just the nature vs. nurture argument (for example, combat based metaphors in cultures where women do not typically serve in the military are likely to affect the perception of who measures up...).

In that vein, I am more jazz guitarist than classical pianist.

Re: Street fighting engineers vs. martial arts engineers

#18
post #8

I struggle to understand what insight is gained from this article. Can anyone explain how this could be useful?

Honestly, it was just an observation.

IMO, the street fighting skill is a bit less known. I worked for a unicorn which had ZERO managers and ZERO Product managers. The engineers had to speak to the users, write the roadmaps, build stuff and report to the founder. I realised this skill was rare among engineers and less talked about. Initially, I titled this "Street fighting engineers", it eventually evolved into this.

Re: Street fighting engineers vs. martial arts engineers

#19
I do well in almost any technical environment but am able to drill down and specialise down the deeper rabbit holes when needed. Sometimes my theoretical knowledge is spotty and lets me down though so I guess I’m more Ryu than Bruce Lee. I’m definitely more around the 7.5x - 8x than 10x though.
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