ZIRP was 2008 to 2022? The 2010s were calm and collected, zirp-mania gripped us through the pandemic. You cannot compare 2011 and 2021. Totally different environments.
The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
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Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
#12There's no reason for engineers to be under more pressure to accept technical debt (which is what we're really talking about with the yes-or-no framing) after the end of ZIRP. Quite the opposite: right now debt is expensive and programmers are cheap, it's a good time to have high quality standards and build robust infrastructure that will position you to catch the next growth wave. It really is AI (or rather AI hype) making the difference.
Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
#13The problem with this kind of armchair economy is that you can argue both ways.
"End of ZIRP and the raise of just-say-no engineers": with capital being more expensive companies need to invest it wisely, therefore the need the judgement of the just-say-no engineer to avoid blowing it on unnecessary stuff.
Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
#14ZIRP was 2008 to 2022? The 2010s were calm and collected, zirp-mania gripped us through the pandemic. You cannot compare 2011 and 2021. Totally different environments.
2021 was the apotheosis of 2011. I'm sure hundreds of examples on this site chronicle how wild and not quite calm nor collected it was, but I liked No Exit by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. (The original WIRED article is paywalled, so here's a specific sub-thread started by tptacek from its discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7644161)
Whatever you want to say the current market is, it's nothing like the early 2010s.
Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
#15[deleted]
Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
#16This is trivially incorrect outside of SV. There are plenty of slow moving projects that focus on the stability of the codebase if you work for a business that isn't a "tech company" and work on services instead of products.
indeed sweeping industry-wide conclusions are often drawn upon technology. however these generally apply to web/apps only. for example, in this thread we have someone extolling the virtues of not reviewing code. this is probably correct in the context of web/apps, but doesn't hold true otherwise. similarly the linked article talks about the frustration of being forced to merge known bad code - acceptable behaviour when the product is pictures on a screen, otherwise i have not observed this behaviour to be systemic
Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
#17Earlier submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245331
There's no discussion there.
Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
#18What a wild take. The straightforward takeaway from the end of ZIRP and the resulting increase in focus would be that you need to say no to more things, not fewer? You have to really contort yourself to argue that actually ZIRP gave rise to an entire class of make-work which then gave rise to a class of folks to keep said make-work under control.
Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon
#19Maybe this article cites a real phenomenon. I don't know. What I find odd though, is that it doesn't even include the question of whether there is merit to the Yes or No of the engineer. Maybe the cynical take is that within many corporations it does in fact not matter, but in the real world if you want to fly to the moon, you will need engineers who say No to ideas that are stupid within the framework of engineering, given the projects budget, time and personal constraints and the goal it tries to reach. You don't need a Yes/No-engineer you need someone who can decide how a reliable well-engineered contraption within those limitations would look like. Sometimes that can be a sophisticated rocket, sometimes it can be a makeshift raft or a band aid slapped on a crumbling structure. A good engineer would be one who understands those constraints, while preventing you from killing people in the process.
Many goals companies want to reach are taking place in the real world. But some are not — and I wonder whether the latter may not sometimes be the actual issue. Money boys playing virtual money games while stopping to care about the real physical world just need someone to go along, so their latest Potemkin village can be painted in the color of the season quickly before Paris fashion week.