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Stop Hiring Software Engineers

carlo-bertuccini.medium.com

11–20 of 26 posts

Re: Stop Hiring Software Engineers

#11
post #5

I couldn’t help slipping into reading this in the voice of David Attenborough. “If you look in under the jungle canopy you just might catch a glimpse of the elusive product engineer. Festooned with their hoodie and mechanical keyboard. What a rare and magnificent find!“

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Re: Stop Hiring Software Engineers

#13

PE in many US states means Professional Engineer, and if you use it in the wrong place, state licensing boards will come after you.

In my mind it means Private Equity or Premature Ejaculater. I deal with many acronyms in my life so they tend to get a bit overloaded.

Re: Stop Hiring Software Engineers

#16
I think what the article describes is something like a cousin of the X-Y problem and Five Times Why. The example given comes off like encouraging layering duct tape "because the business needs this thing for yesterday", but I think what the author is saying is: "hire engineers who aren't prone to thinking in a myopic way, but instead seek out the 'why' before they think of the 'how'".

Re: Stop Hiring Software Engineers

#17

Now I might be out of the loop, but this -is- a software engineer if they're doing it right, right?

For you and me, yes. Corporations, however, decided to never promote people that can code and to create new positions, like product owner, scrum master, all kinds of managers, that will be filled with cheaper, unable to code people. My experience is that a lot of very important questions never get asked until it is too late: until a developer has to write the code.

Re: Stop Hiring Software Engineers

#18

> if (text.trim().length() And then they released the product in Japan and got complaints that there were a whole lot of special requests that were being ignored (because you can encode far more information in those two characters) Maybe you do need a software engineer after all?

The only thing missing in that code is a comment saying "temporary fix" that will still be there 10 years later.

Re: Stop Hiring Software Engineers

#19
I consider myself to be one of these product oriented developers (not sure about being 10x though).

Interestingly, while interviewing this has always been my bane, as the typical interviewing process goes along the tech stack and tech-related trivia (probably because it is easier to assess), and almost never towards the product side of things.

And with the tech stack questions those are always in favour who are interested in the latest version of framework X, as opposed to real world problem solving. And don't even mention leetcode :)

Re: Stop Hiring Software Engineers

#20

> if (text.trim().length() And then they released the product in Japan and got complaints that there were a whole lot of special requests that were being ignored (because you can encode far more information in those two characters) Maybe you do need a software engineer after all?

If those two lines remove 100 of complaints per day but add 10, it's still a net positive change that creates value. Especially since special requests were never supposed to be a guarantee in the first place.

The fact that one type of complaints get converted into another type is an unforeseen consequence. But shipping the change is still worthwhile because it's the only way to expand your domain knowledge and learn about those consequences.

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