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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

#211

Post by TZubiri »

mbernstein wrote: post #207
TZubiri wrote: post #198

Engineering work, like many other branches of intellectual work, does not have many of the properties of other jobs. So I don't share the ideal of a normal engineer doing normal work in their office hours. I also don't buy into the 10x pushback, there's not only 10x engineers, there's 100x engs. Easy to prove, can you think of an engineer that adds negative value? That deletes tests, or breaks stuff? That adds left-p…

These are terrible examples that don't prove a single thing. Babel, Webpack, and React all used leftpad as dependencies. Blaming someone for using an Apache project is absurd. Here's my pointless randomly made up on the spot anecdote - you're more likely to write a vulnerability in your own logging system than being impactedby using a widely adopted opensource one.

[flagged]

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

#212

Post by WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #132
WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> You think Google has 5,000 people working on novel design spaces?

Yes.

Maintaining a bridge is in general not novel. There are clearly established best practices that have stood the test of time.

Maintaining a ridiculous tangle of millions of lines of code is novel. There are no best practices on par with other engineering fields. We are at the stage of rough heuristics in most parts of software dev.

One day there will be broad and consistent over time agreement on how to handle large software projects. But we aren't there yet.

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

#213

Post by jackcosgrove »

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…

Novelty is a byproduct of immaturity. To take another field that matured recently, mechanical and in particular aerospace. You can see a lot of crazy airplane designs from the 1920s through the 1940s. There was a lot of novelty back then and it was an exciting field to work in. Now airplane designs look very standard, and for good reason. The field matured and figured out the best and most economical designs. Novelty is a temporary state, and most novel designs are figuring out how not to do things.

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

#214

Post by Aurornis »

swatcoder wrote: post #147
ambicapter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, the field grew tremendously and you can see a clear generational bias -- by years of experience, not age -- where the cohort from the last 10-15 years has a completely different understanding of what the craft is [software engineering vs business development] and how to approach it [optimal solution vs soonest deliverable]. You can also trace personal backgrounds and you'll see a much higher representation in the…

> No, the field grew tremendously and you can see a clear generational bias -- by years of experience, not age -- where the cohort from the last 10-15 years has a completely different understanding of what the craft is

I bet a lot of people 10-15 years older than you would say the same thing - except they'd say it about you and your generation.

I'm not that old, but I've been around long enough to hear people of every age over about 30 claim that everything was better back in their day until the new generation came along and ruined it.

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

#215

Post by jimbokun »

strangattractor wrote: post #22
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 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…

> I would work all night.

This is not a 10X programmer. A 10X programmer delivers the same amount of functionality in 1/10 the time.

For me the first 10x programmer that comes to mind is Peter Norvig. This spell checker he wrote in a single flight remains a work of art:

https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

Very few programmers would come up with something so concise and elegant yet powerful in such a short amount of time.

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

#216

Post by rsanek »

lovich wrote: post #20
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…

>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…

>Once tech [...] started being a source of wealth and power

this happened "in the early 2010s"? I don't think so. Software engineers have no power, and in comparison to finance, quite limited wealth.

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

#217

Post by TZubiri »

djeastm wrote: post #210
TZubiri wrote: post #198

Engineering work, like many other branches of intellectual work, does not have many of the properties of other jobs. So I don't share the ideal of a normal engineer doing normal work in their office hours. I also don't buy into the 10x pushback, there's not only 10x engineers, there's 100x engs. Easy to prove, can you think of an engineer that adds negative value? That deletes tests, or breaks stuff? That adds left-p…

>Easy to prove, can you think of an engineer that adds negative value? That deletes tests, or breaks stuff? No. Have you really worked with someone that did this and they weren't fired?

I'll change the perspective so that we can look further.

Have you ever seen a product that got worse over time instead of better?

I find that it's the majority. Even if they get sales and more users. I'll list the exceptions: whatsapp, and even they succumb to bloat features like ai slop or stories or "communities".

If you take a wider period, all software gets worse with time(they die, nothing is forever).

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

#219

Post by rosstex »

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…

Autism? Does it really matter? People have different priorities in life. Some people stay in academia because they're afraid of the real world.

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

#220

Post by soulofmischief »

TZubiri wrote: post #211
mbernstein wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are terrible examples that don't prove a single thing. Babel, Webpack, and React all used leftpad as dependencies. Blaming someone for using an Apache project is absurd. Here's my pointless randomly made up on the spot anecdote - you're more likely to write a vulnerability in your own logging system than being impactedby using a widely adopted opensource one.

[flagged]

It sounds like you don't have an appreciation for software complexity.

What starts off as a simple write() call balloons into a complex system as it evolves to meet your needs. Only then will we know if a great developer was behind the wheels, by how easy it is for the next person in job of maintaining and extending the system to fuck something up due to a lack of context and experience.

Another sign of a real 10x engineer is an even temperament and a lack of arrogance, as being a team player is important in any environment. You can't be a 10x engineer in a vacuum.

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