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You must read at least one book to ride

ludic.mataroa.blog

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Re: You must read at least one book to ride

#71

Post by llm_trw »

loeber wrote: post #65

> I've only ever written tests for personal projects because no employer I've ever seen actually had any working tests or interest in getting them, and I wrote the entirety of my Master's thesis code without version control because one of the best universities in the country doesn't teach it. I'm sorry, but after reading this sentence there is no way that this man is a great engineer. And I don't care how much he stu…

You're mistaking tools for ability.

I have no idea if OP is a good engineer.

But I have worked with a 100x engineer who never used version control and build in an a week what a team of 5 couldn't in two years.

Re: You must read at least one book to ride

#73

Post by llm_trw »

thundergolfer wrote: post #31

I love this guy's cynicism and no-bullshit attitude. As someone who lived in Melbourne and has suffered Deloitte's "technology" department, the frustration and anger is warranted. Like everyone else, Australia has tech brain drain and loses its best software engineers to USA. But unlike almost everyone else it's a very rich country and so can still afford to spend billions of dollars training and deploying engineers…

Australia has amazing CS departments that produce more top talent computer scientists per capita than any other place I've seen.

They then export those engineers to the US and Europe and import people by the boat full who can't code their way out of a for loop with a map and compass.

Re: You must read at least one book to ride

#74

Post by l0b0 »

DavidPiper wrote: post #68

> I can't help but feel that something has gone dreadfully wrong in society in that we've decided to start incentivizing people with no talent or interest to participate in the technology space. Many of them are extremely wide awake in other areas, be it sports, art, mathematics, whatever. Unfortunately for complex reasons related to some sectors having more money than they know what to do with, large organizations b…

> 3. If the situation is so bad, why aren't companies training their staff directly, on the job?

Short-term and wrong-headed thinking. Most places seem to consider all employees basically "fully trained", and bizarrely treat on-the-job training as a favour to the employee. This is probably connected (influencing, influenced by, or both, who knows) to how tech workers have short stints at each company.

Re: You must read at least one book to ride

#75

Post by aucisson_masque »

Damn, it feel like you either have to read a book or you’re a looser.

I do read book but at the end I would still do things my own way and not follow someone else ‘Best practice’ because life is made of trial and errors. There is value in failing something and getting back to it.

It reads like this author is a nerd, for lack of a better word, not someone I would enjoy talking to for extended period of time.

Re: You must read at least one book to ride

#76

Post by duggan »

fragmede wrote: post #62
duggan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have I just had the misfortune of working at particularly crappy companies, or are things really this bad across the whole industry? It's not universal, but you might have to do a lot of searching. Personally, I think it's easier to find the right people in smaller companies, mostly because it's harder to hide in the crowd that way, but there are clever, dedicated people in companies of all sizes. You'll do ok. Kee…

smaller companies are more exposed to customer demands. whether that makes for better or worse code depends on the team and company culture. the demand to ship something right this second and is existential for the company tends to prioritize shipping over well engineered code. At the opposite end of the spectrum, being totally insulated from such demands can lead to some really nice design docs, and code that might…

> the demand to ship something right this second and is existential for the company tends to prioritize shipping over well engineered code.

This is a challenge, though very early in my career I learned that one solution to this is to just get better and faster.

Failing to deliver to your own standards becomes a motivator (with lots of caveats in regard to working environment, domain applicability, etc).

Re: You must read at least one book to ride

#78

Post by cxr »

> I wrote the entirety of my Master's thesis code without version control because one of the best universities in the country doesn't teach it

They probably do, but it's not under the university's college of engineering and they don't call it "version control". Instead it's a subject covered in humanities courses and they call it "textual criticism".

Re: You must read at least one book to ride

#79

Post by anal_reactor »

skybrian wrote: post #29

He's a good writer, but I think he underestimates the implicit skills that an experienced engineer has that beginners don't have. Sometimes it just seems like common sense, but it isn't, and the result is often a lack of empathy. To build up that empathy, being around children or the elderly probably helps. Also, helping a relative who is struggling but you're on their side . Also consider the difference between a na…

How can I build this empathy? I feel extremely frustrated when spending time with people less educated than myself

Re: You must read at least one book to ride

#80

Post by michaelcampbell »

anal_reactor wrote: post #79
skybrian wrote: post #29

He's a good writer, but I think he underestimates the implicit skills that an experienced engineer has that beginners don't have. Sometimes it just seems like common sense, but it isn't, and the result is often a lack of empathy. To build up that empathy, being around children or the elderly probably helps. Also, helping a relative who is struggling but you're on their side . Also consider the difference between a na…

How can I build this empathy? I feel extremely frustrated when spending time with people less educated than myself

Spend more time with people MORE educated than you.
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