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“Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

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Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#81

Post by knowsuchagency »

noosphr wrote: post #51
jaggederest wrote: post #5

I like this article particularly because I think the trope that there's something unique and different about software engineering is pretty toxic, both to we people in the field and people looking to employ people in the field. These days it feels a bit like another well known toxic field, finance, in that people conflate an outsized leverage for personal valor. It's laudable to do your work well and go home to the r…

Software is different. All other engineering disciplines are ultimately limited to building things in (at most) 3 euclidean dimensions. There is only so much junk you can hide in a finite volume of space. Code by comparison lives in hyperbolic space [0] and you can hide _anything_ in such a space without it being obvious. This is exemplified by the unpleasant discovery all of us have had of a supposedly peripheral fo…

Disagree.

What makes software unique to other engineering disciplines is that it isn't a discipline at all. What makes software so great is how quick the iteration cycles are.

Software sits at a higher abstraction level than physical hardware, so much of our time is spent throwing at the wall and seeing what sticks because that's often (although not always) the best use of time.

Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#82

Post by sroussey »

noosphr wrote: post #51
jaggederest wrote: post #5

I like this article particularly because I think the trope that there's something unique and different about software engineering is pretty toxic, both to we people in the field and people looking to employ people in the field. These days it feels a bit like another well known toxic field, finance, in that people conflate an outsized leverage for personal valor. It's laudable to do your work well and go home to the r…

Software is different. All other engineering disciplines are ultimately limited to building things in (at most) 3 euclidean dimensions. There is only so much junk you can hide in a finite volume of space. Code by comparison lives in hyperbolic space [0] and you can hide _anything_ in such a space without it being obvious. This is exemplified by the unpleasant discovery all of us have had of a supposedly peripheral fo…

The methodology is unconstrained as another way to put it.

Which, indeed, is different from engineering where constraints are non-negotiable, and thus the methodology as well.

I think a lot of people doing functional programming, as an example, enjoy the constraints and the discipline that it imbues on their craft.

Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#83

Post by didgetmaster »

I worked for a couple companies during my career whose main product was incredibly complex and difficult to understand. Making a minor change in one component could send ripples through the whole product.

One or two 'superstar' engineers who had been with the project for more than a decade were the only ones who understood the bulk of it. They had job security!

I often wondered if they intentionally created it to be that way out of self interest. It made things rough for all the 'normal' engineers who wanted to improve things but got pushback from them and management.

Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#84

Post by jonfromsf »

noosphr wrote: post #51
jaggederest wrote: post #5

I like this article particularly because I think the trope that there's something unique and different about software engineering is pretty toxic, both to we people in the field and people looking to employ people in the field. These days it feels a bit like another well known toxic field, finance, in that people conflate an outsized leverage for personal valor. It's laudable to do your work well and go home to the r…

Software is different. All other engineering disciplines are ultimately limited to building things in (at most) 3 euclidean dimensions. There is only so much junk you can hide in a finite volume of space. Code by comparison lives in hyperbolic space [0] and you can hide _anything_ in such a space without it being obvious. This is exemplified by the unpleasant discovery all of us have had of a supposedly peripheral fo…

You can hide ANYTHING with financial engineering. Like off-books liabilities, systemic risk ... anything.

Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#85

Post by einpoklum »

> "Engineers don’t own software, teams own software"

This is often the opposite of the truth. That is, teams are much more often formally-owning software, but "owning" in the sense of actually being responsible and feeling responsible for its functioning, well-being, and strive towards polish and realization of potential - more often than not, it's one or a few individuals. If it's a large software system, a lot of people have to put in their work as well, but still.

I am occasionally in a situation where I feel more "ownership" towards a software project I have no formal responsibility for than I believe the formal owners do, and find the, to be poor stewards of that software. Not that I have the time to take over for them, but I have the motivation, and it pains me to see them mistreat it and mar it with unworthy merges.

PS - I am not speaking as a supposed "10x engineer".

Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#86

Post by [deleted] »

vrnvu wrote: post #36

> 10x engineers have dark backgrounds, are rarely seen doing user-interface work, and are poor mentors and interviewers If you think a great (10x) engineer has bad social skills, isn’t a good mentor, and isn’t a strong teammate… you’ve never actually worked with one. What truly makes someone a great engineer is being technically impeccable and having next-level soft skills.

[deleted]

Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#87

Post by steveBK123 »

Nevermark wrote: post #75
n_ary wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe, you have got the multipliers switched. Most 1x engineers/developers care deeply about users and the end product, and also likes to keep the code well maintained and performant, so they can do their peaceful work and go home, while not making the life of the user any more miserable. Most 10x engineers are too brilliant and remain busy rocking the boat and doing so many mind blowing things at any given time…

Someone imagining they are brilliant doesn’t make them brilliant. More so if in the light of day their work sucks. Discussions about 10x engineers are not about “wannabe 10x engineers”. — I have yet to come across an intellectual area where there isn’t a long tail of higher talent. As the “x” goes up they just get more rare in reality, and even rarer to see. Because they are not always being optimally challenged. Mos…

You really can over-hire and I've seen it happen in many shops

If a "10x engineer" is not given 10x problems, they will.. create some.

Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#88

Post by parliament32 »

superconduct123 wrote: post #24

I think 10x is an exaggeration but I've found its really common to have 1-2 people who do a big bulk of the work The thing I don't understand personally with these people is why they care so much about work when the rewards are not proportionate to doing so much extra work. I get it if you're a founder of a startup but not if you're at a big company Yet every big company I've worked at there are always 1-2 people on…

Because it's rewarding in its own right. I can't imagine doing the bare minimum at work -- pretty sure I'd melt of boredom within a week. "Owning" a project/component/whatever keeps things interesting and keeps me engaged, and extrinsic rewards aren't that important if you're making a healthy salary in the first place.

Re: “Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

#89

Post by d--b »

Why shouldn’t there be a continuous range of skill? Why should we want normal engineers instead of you know “good” ones, or even “really good” ones?

Oh and also, it wouldn’t hurt to qualify those skills to the specific domain to which they apply. Like “he’s a really good database engineer” or “he’s a great C# guy, but terrible at DevOps”

These articles are polarizing because they take for original assumption that the real world is discontinuous. That’s stupid.

Let’s praise the engineer that’s in the 2.5x to 7x range.

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