“Normal” engineers are the key to great teams

Post by gilbetron » Fri, Mar 14, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

Dracophoenix wrote: post #314

gilbetron wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 40 years of professional software development, rarely have I seen such an uninformed post. And ignorant. Did I mention ignorant? I've been the "10x" developer, multiple times. And there certainly are poor performers and exceptional performers, but great teams makes great software, not great individuals. The analogies are numerous. You can look at a great (american) football team and see the Quarterback as the 1…

> but great teams makes great software, not great individuals. For a long time, OpenSSL, the standard encryption library used in everything from global banking systems to embedded devices, was built and maintained by two full-time engineers. It took the Heartbleed episode in 2014 to publicly acknowledge that potentially millions of technical projects stood (at least in part) on the backs of two nameless individuals a…

Post by vonneumannstan » Fri, Mar 14, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

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…

Post by 0xB31B1B » Fri, Mar 14, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

alphazard wrote: post #397

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…

This comment is spot on. I would add that it's not only 1 super smart person, or only 2 people per team, it's a power law. 1 person does the most, a few people do almost as much, then you start getting out into the tail of "normal" people. You can try to hard partition the tail and create an 80/20 rule, but it's fundamentally continuous, and the shape parameter will be different for each organization. Understanding t…

Post by Swizec » Fri, Mar 14, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #298

Swizec wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as an old school basement nerd (coding since middle school, 90’s): If I can do cool things with code _and_ get paid, I’m gonna go do that. Business constraints make it feel much more interesting than writing code in a vacuum. Also money is nice.

> Business constraints make it feel much more interesting than writing code in a vacuum. You never write code in a vacuum do you? You always have some kind of goal.

Post by gavmor » Fri, Mar 14, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

TZubiri wrote: post #398

gavmor wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hardly the fault of the engineer that products are poorly managed, or poorly designed.

No. The engineer is ultimately responsible for the product. If a bridge falls, will the engineer wash his hands?