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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

#131

Post by grandempire »

aisisbdidns wrote: post #127
0xB31B1B wrote: post #117

I could not disagree more with nearly everything in this article. Individuals ship software not teams, unless you are pair programming. Nearly all complex technical projects are owned by one super smart person (Ex: linux). You don't need to have a scientific measurement of productivity to know that in your median team of 12 there really are 2 people carrying the water for everyone else. A players hire A players, B pl…

You’re over optimizing for engineering skill. The majority of projects don’t need a team full of A players, and trying to get that is going to limit you. Get rid of team members that make your life harder. Keep the ones that make it easier. > Individuals ship software not teams I can’t see how this is remotely true outside of contorting some definitions of “ship”.

In every project I have worked in big and small - a key person took charge. Others contributed, but that individual made it happen.

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

#132

Post by freddie_mercury »

WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW wrote: post #94
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…

> I like this article particularly because I think the trope that there's something unique and different about software engineering is pretty toxic The ratio of software engineers working in novel design spaces compared to plumbing style work is best guess ~1:5. The ratio in more mature fields like civil engineering is closer to ~1:500. There are lots of similarities between software engineers and the few folk in civ…

> The ratio of software engineers working in novel design spaces compared to plumbing style work is best guess ~1:5

Google has something 25,000 developers. You think Google has 5,000 people working on novel design spaces? That number sound way, way too high. By at least an order of magnitude.

And Google at least has customer facing technology compared to the thousands of companies whose developers only work is, say, integrating HR systems or deploying SAP or maintaining some legacy billing system.

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

knowsuchagency wrote: post #81
noosphr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by strangattractor »

awesome_dude wrote: post #55
strangattractor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once considered a 10X. I would work all night. Rewrite code simply because I found it objectionable - lots of things I'd never do now. Mostly after working those long hours I return after a long rest and spend most of my time fixing all the new and ridiculous problems I created while working tired. Things may have gotten done a little faster. Never once did it even matter - there was no material benefit to the…

> Never once did it even matter - there was no material benefit to the company. I think that the idea of having people (at startups) working at a frenetic pace is because 1. The VC money is running low 2. Being first to market used to be a major determining factor on whether the product would succeed or fail

My experience is that people tend to fill the time they give themselves to do things. Give yourself 12 you take 12 hours. But humans have a limit to the focused productive work they can do. Lets say it is 4 hours. So of that 12 hr - 4 was really productive and 8 not so much. When I was at my tiredest I often spent hours trying to debug issues that literally took me minutes when I was rested.

One time I worked so many hours I lost vision (temporarily) in my eye - called cotton wool spots. I was a generally healthy younger guy. Working this way has health effects. If in fact there is such a thing as 10x engineer - how long do you think you will stay 10X once your health deteriorates. Just my 2 cents.

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

#135

Post by aisisbdidns »

grandempire wrote: post #131
aisisbdidns wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re over optimizing for engineering skill. The majority of projects don’t need a team full of A players, and trying to get that is going to limit you. Get rid of team members that make your life harder. Keep the ones that make it easier. > Individuals ship software not teams I can’t see how this is remotely true outside of contorting some definitions of “ship”.

In every project I have worked in big and small - a key person took charge. Others contributed, but that individual made it happen.

[dead]

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

#136

Post by only-one1701 »

ambicapter wrote: post #111
lovich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These days it feels a bit like another well known toxic field, finance, in that people conflate an outsized leverage for personal valor. Didn't we pass the rubicon on that in the early 2010s? I personally don't feel that its "like" finance but that its the exact same behaviors from the exact same set of people. Once tech stopped being a bunch of nerds in a basement and started being a source of wealth and power, it…

I don't think it "attracted" a certain kind of people, I think the people who were already in tech just became more wealthy and powerful, and that, predictably, brought out the worst in some. The worst qualities of "tech" people can be conflated but I think have a different flavor than the worst qualities of "finance" people. It's really just the same obnoxious behavior you can spot in young tech people. Some people…

It's a "yes and" situation. You're completely correct that people who were already in tech just became more wealthy, but there's no question that in the mid to late teens (in particular), tech fundamentally became, for many, about $$$. There was a huge migration of people who couldn't write code from NY to SF in a "there's gold in them thar hills" kind of way.

Now the people entering the industry by and large see it as a game of wealth acquisition similar to finance or big law, and big tech is adapting in a similar way -- high salaries, insanely bad wlb, politics far exceeding any other skill as a determiner of career progression.

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

#137

Post by gerdesj »

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…

"All other engineering disciplines are ultimately limited to building things in (at most) 3 euclidean dimensions."

Trying to diminish engineering disciplines that have existed for millennia by imposing an arbitrary constraint of "3 euclidean" is pretty wank. Let's drop silly constraints.

Do you have any idea how complicated concrete is? It's just sand, aggregate, cement and water. Exothermic reaction. Job done.

Let's look at wood ... the stuff is a bundle of fibres and stuff and yet we build huge structures out of it. Who on earth knows how or why plywood works? Britain had several all wooden aircraft during WWII - the Mosquito was so good that Herman Goering declared that it was worth two kills.

Steel - its just iron with other stuff.

Software engineering is growing up gradually but please don't be a dick towards people who practice disciplines that invented things and concepts you rely on and live within.

For example the concept of a token that allows you to do something exclusively - " exclusive lock" - was popularised by early railways. A single track should have only one train on it and after a few accidents the idea of an exclusive token was "invented" that could be passed across to the next exclusive user.

When you say hyperbolic, you should be aware of how close that is to hyperbole.

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

#138

Post by lovich »

ambicapter wrote: post #111
lovich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These days it feels a bit like another well known toxic field, finance, in that people conflate an outsized leverage for personal valor. Didn't we pass the rubicon on that in the early 2010s? I personally don't feel that its "like" finance but that its the exact same behaviors from the exact same set of people. Once tech stopped being a bunch of nerds in a basement and started being a source of wealth and power, it…

I don't think it "attracted" a certain kind of people, I think the people who were already in tech just became more wealthy and powerful, and that, predictably, brought out the worst in some. The worst qualities of "tech" people can be conflated but I think have a different flavor than the worst qualities of "finance" people. It's really just the same obnoxious behavior you can spot in young tech people. Some people…

The behavior you're describing definitely happened but what I'm describing did as well.

At some point the wheeling and dealing, snake oil, corporate backstabby like people that many associate with finance were actually high schoolers at some point who had to pick where they went in life. The ones who only care about wealth and power, only care about wealth and power, so if software was a good route to that theyll put on their software face and do that job. Before software made a lot of money for people, finance was the default

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

#139

Post by not_a_bot_4sho »

booleandilemma wrote: post #41
behrlich wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> completely obsessed with the project, like it’s their main hobby/purpose I think you figured it out.

If your main hobby or purpose is to make someone else rich you're a slave.

I'd love to hear your take on those dumbass medical research scientist slaves who haven't figured out life. Probably wasting their time looking for cures, when they could be starting their own crypto or podcast or innovation-firm instead.

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

#140

Post by NalNezumi »

grandempire wrote: post #131
aisisbdidns wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re over optimizing for engineering skill. The majority of projects don’t need a team full of A players, and trying to get that is going to limit you. Get rid of team members that make your life harder. Keep the ones that make it easier. > Individuals ship software not teams I can’t see how this is remotely true outside of contorting some definitions of “ship”.

In every project I have worked in big and small - a key person took charge. Others contributed, but that individual made it happen.

so in every key project you've worked on, a one single person took care of the coding from DevOps to frontend/backend, deployment, testing, and all other coding required beyond "key functionality"?

I think it says more about the size of the project and the complexity of the task that you've worked on, rather than "10x engineer vs normal engineer". Not even at a 10 person startup have I seen "one" person done everything. Unless you're talking about someone just forking OSS and gluing it together, to make a carbon-copy application of something that already exist(for free) then sure.

Edit: >key person took charge and made it happen

person - singular.

made it happen - it's hard to call an engine a car. to make something happen, you need all the component (contributions).

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