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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

#251

Post by asdff »

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…

People in the trades relatively speaking in the midwest are easily far more wealthy than engineers in the bay area, and they have no such delusions of grandeur seemingly. They seem to understand that an electrician is an electrician and an engineer is fungible. That is why many of these engineers are unionized as well because they understand labor is replaceable and needs to advocate for itself. The coasts have much to learn from the corn lands it seems despite the prevailing narrative being the opposite.

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

#252

Post by jonas21 »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #213
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…

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…

You're mistaking complacency and lack of innovation for maturity.

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

#253

Post by grandempire »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #169
swatcoder wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This post is so weird on so many levels. I'll focus on this part: > You can also trace personal backgrounds and you'll see a much higher representation in the newer cohort coming from upper middle class backgrounds with families in careers like finance, consulting, medicine/dentistry whereas more in the older cohort came from more modest middle class backgrounds in engineering, academia, or even working class trades.…

That’s why the bill gates story got so much public attention. It’s surprising. Their Harvard kid is doing what?

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

#254

Post by Nathanba »

swatcoder wrote: post #245
Nathanba wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's a bad analogy because a single football player cannot ever deliver a match entirely on his own. A single developer can absolutely deliver a full product on his own, it's not inherently a team sport whatsoever. You could make this claim about many things, "blacksmithing is a team sport!" Nonsense.

While a single talented developer can conceptually complete a whole project (of some kind) on their own, the concrete reality is that they're often being tasked to do so in the context of some time and resource bounded opportunity. There's only so much code they write per unit time, only so many designs they can consider, only so many meetings they can attend, only so many demonstrations they can perform, only so man…

Nobody is seriously claiming that all work on earth can be done by individuals. Obviously the master blacksmith that designs and leads the outfitting of the entire king's army with superior weaponry thanks to his personal leadership and expertise and care ... is not hammering every sword himself. But to call it a team sport is also highly misleading and to say that he hasn't been x10 is also just flat out wrong.

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

#255

Post by antoniojtorres »

callc wrote: post #244
noosphr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you're getting that from my post. The point is that all other engineering disciplines don't have enough design space to make a true mess of their projects. Software by comparison hasn't been limited in its design space since the first super computers started having gigabytes of ram memory in the late 1980s. That doesn't mean that either discipline is better or worse, it means they are different. Other…

I say this as someone who loves software: software is not special. Every discipline has infinite depth. Railways in 2D may seem simple but there the simplicity may be intentional. Just like when you write software that runs things like planes, trains, or medical devices, all of a sudden you’re writing in C, without recursion, without function pointers, without using the heap, etc. Look at the concord airplane. A mess…

I don’t think the comment was meant derisive like you and the other commenter are interpreting… relax?

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

#256

Post by on_the_train »

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…

Thank you. Every software is essentially being built by a few greats fighting against a dozen morons. 10x doesn't even get close to reality.

We're currently in deep shit because a long term dev was under the assumption that you can only instantiate objects once. He built an insanely complex system around the belief, which shipped. Our users used that system to write configuration files that now drive a machine that cost about half a billion dollars. So we can barely change anything because the data must be supported for 25 years.

The cost of such fools is orders of magnitude higher than their salary. I'm convinced that the world would be a better place without bad devs. Everything would be faster with less people, too.

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

#257

Post by asdff »

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…

This is what happens anytime a field gets large in terms of job applications. Replace software engineer with anything else to that measure and you see the same things with wealthy families being overrepresented in the cohort because they always have an edge in getting the best credentials due to not having to work any part time jobs and having mom and dad (or even a paid advisor) actively working on your behalf to vet potential internships or other opportunities for you. You are essentially out numbered 3:1 or even 4:1 or more, and you can't work a full 1 part anyhow due to the aforementioned other obligations life has saddled on you.

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

#259

Post by pests »

from-nibly wrote: post #186
pests wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a buddy that helped me out with some DIY/construction projects. He thinks he is a 10x as well since he gets so much done so quickly. He will finish up and sit down saying its done. I go look and every tool is literally everywhere, garbage and debris thrown about, and half the stuff is incorrectly installed as he didn't think he needed to read the instructions and missed key details.

That's someone who thinks they are 10x not someone who is.

I think that would apply to many of those 10x'ers were talking about here tho.

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

#260

Post by asdff »

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…

Both software and physical engineering can hide junk. It just depends on who is looking. There are plenty of products made that are junk. If you start to understand how products actually come to fruition in the business world, you will see that most of what we buy or sell or see marketed is actually junk. This is because engineering both in software and in the physical world is rarely, if ever, incentivized to seek out a perfectly optimal solution. What is able to generate profit sufficiently over costs, today with today's economic context, is what ends up getting shipped in both cases. That might change tomorrow and suddenly the product is not viable due to the costs of the junk associated with it. We talk about legacy code and how it is junk we are beholden to, go ahead and look at the engineering behind car designs and you will see there are legacy engines, legacy car platforms that people are similarly beholden to no different than legacy code people are afraid to touch. And that is just that one sector. Legacy engineering is present in everything you can conceive of due to the fact no one is paid to go off into the woods and optimize optimize optimize, only to ship by a deadline even if it a stinking pile of you know what. That is for sales to figure out.
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