Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for • Hacker News Board

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#111

Post by moocow01 » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:10 PM UTC

I would guess this has become a trend based on the following...

1) Entrance of lower quality, inexperienced founders who want an end product and only know about the buzzwords that supposedly go into building that product. They don't have an expert grasp on the development process so they naively think the process is to collect a group of people with all skills.

2) The advances in work process efficiencies make it easier to do different jobs in tech. Consequently, this makes it much more possible for 1 person to wear many hats somewhat more effectively. 10 to 20 years ago, these sort of job descriptions would be 100% insane because it took so much more out of the different disciplines to put software together. It would be like a hospital posting a job opening for a doctor who can also drive the ambulance.

On the 2nd point it makes me wonder if eventually at some point in the future the startup team along with the need for venture capital will be obsolete. If we follow the current trajectory, I could see building tech startups being more and more the domain of one to a couple people with slim to none capital requirements.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#112

Post by rhizome » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:15 PM UTC

nimblegorilla wrote: post #83

asolove wrote: post #9

I think the problem is not that one person can't have both of these skills, but that it is hard to play both roles on the same project unless you have a lot of discipline. The engineering mindset and the UX design mindset optimize for different things. Even if you are excellent at both, it helps to have someone else forcing you to get the UX right when you're doing the engineering work, and to make the engineering po…

A lot of people can do passable jobs on both roles, but I've never met someone who was awesome on the backend that was also a great UX designer. Likewise, the best designers can whip up a new UI in an afternoon, but it might take them a couple weeks to get it coded.

Maybe, but requiring both skills to be "great" and "awesome" in order to be anything more than "passable" is a little unfair, no? Are there situations for which "passable" is indeed doing a good job?

And yes, it often takes longer to code features than it does to draw and place their UI elements.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#113

Post by fistofjohnwayne » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

tibbon wrote: post #71

I am a designineer. The problem is that it doesn't make you an expert of all skills. Jack of all trades, master of none. While I took AP CS in high school, I can't rattle off the to O-notation of most algorithms. While I took plenty of art and design classes over the years, I'm no Jony Ives. But, its not about what I can't do in my mind, but what I can do. I learn most things very quickly. I'm decent in Ruby and can…

I'm in the same boat. Until five months ago I'd only worked for smaller web design/dev/marketing shops because the opportunity to "wear different hats" presented itself more regularly. My current position at a larger company is "Front End Engineer" and I only arrived at that after a significant rebranding of myself.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#114

Post by kenamarit » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

asolove wrote: post #9

I think the problem is not that one person can't have both of these skills, but that it is hard to play both roles on the same project unless you have a lot of discipline. The engineering mindset and the UX design mindset optimize for different things. Even if you are excellent at both, it helps to have someone else forcing you to get the UX right when you're doing the engineering work, and to make the engineering po…

Agreed. It's hard to switch gears from being head deep in back end code to thinking about and approaching a problem in terms of design. Maybe if you can spend one day coding and the next designing...

Unless I'm working for myself I find I rarely have this freedom. This is why I left my last startup. If I'm trying to do both there are too many things that I'm accountable for on a daily basis to the boss, who in my experience doesn't want me to stop coding to "waste a day" designing.

And in the end I feel like I just end up doing a half-assed job on both. More power to those who can do the switcheroo, be excellent in both, and keep the writer-of-paychecks happy!

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#115

Post by jgw » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:21 PM UTC

thinker wrote: post #103

tedkimble wrote: post #72

Engineering and designing are much more similar than they are different. I recently completed a four-year graduate design degree (architecture) after a lifetime of math, physics and not a whip of art or design experience. Here's my take on this issue. Engineering and design are both fundamentally processes of creation. While both creations must meet one or more objectives, the types of those objectives often differ.…

I'd love to read your thoughts on this as a blog post - do you have one?

I'll second that. Very nicely articulated.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#116

Post by davesims » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:21 PM UTC

I do all of those, and I am definitely not a genius. Nor all that rare. Most of the projects I've worked on in the last 5 years have had several devs who could go end-to-end, and the ones that weren't were working towards that goal.

It's really not rocket surgery, it's just a matter of applying yourself over time and every few months acquire new skills in an essential area. CSS, JS, Ruby, TCP/IP, HTTP/REST, UI/UX, SQL, design patterns, on and on. Set em up and knock em down. Be a generalist, but be a very good one.

It's not that hard to accomplish over time and it keeps you engaged longer. Heck, it's just more fun. I'm an 'older' coder and taking that approach I think has kept me from getting bored, kept me sharp and also kept me from feeling like all these young'uns is passin me by. Hey! Get off my lawn...

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#117

Post by nhangen » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:22 PM UTC

Amazing how many people are tooting their own horns in here. IMO, if you are one, you don't claim it, people know by looking at your work. But anyway...

This has been my problem breaking into the industry. A few years ago I didn't understand a lick of HTML/CSS and changed that by digging in and learning it. Now I can build WP themes from scratch (not the most semantic, but I can still do it), and write functions/code in PHP. Now I'm working on js and jQuery, while also trying to learn the rest of the LAMP stack.

Still, it seems like every time I teach myself something new, a new skill is added to the startup rockstar job requirement list. I get that startups want to fill big holes, and that many pay accordingly, but this is why so many junior level people decide to build their own companies instead of asking permission to learn a little on the job.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#118

Post by emp_ » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:25 PM UTC

I have 15,000+ hours on each. My opinion is that good taste and intuition play great value on code, best practices and testing do the same to UI/UX and so on.

The funny drawbacks are usually that you can hardly win a discussion with people that don't know you well since they will usually corner you on your other 'personality' such as "says the interior decorator" when talking about CQRS or REST etc.

I currently work on 'Evil Enterprise Contractor' building web-based products but I too get to switch context all the time, from conception to live.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#119

Post by mikeklaas » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:25 PM UTC

Just find a former technical founder that was by necessity forced to learn all these skills.

That's how I became solid (but not expert-level) in distributed systems, machine learning, web development, UX/UI design, and app dev.

Even for large teams, having people who have a deep understanding of all areas of work is underrated.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#120

Post by bigohms » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 6:27 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #85

bigohms wrote: post #41

I have about 14 years into my career as a web guy who can code (front to back), design killer UI and create, execute and grow business strategy. What that being set! "being" a generalist is not for everyone. There are some things to note: 1. Keeping up with all three is a LOT of work. Understanding the latest javascript libraries, deployment tech, UI tools and successful business models take a ton of time. I roughly…

Are you really? I think it's worth providing examples if you're going to claim you're both a great coder and designer. As the only link I can find to your work that you've shared so far is this http://cookbuk.com/ (from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2289991 ) The design's not bad and avoids most developer designed pitfalls, but it's not great either. HTML wise you've resorted to nested divs, there's errant elem…

Matt, neither my code nor design will ever match someone who specializes in these areas. So I feel you're kind of missing the point. I never claimed to be a great anything so I wouldn't go jumping to conclusions. I simply do a little of everything. Kudos to your HN detective skills, Cookbuk was a weekend project hacked together playing with CI. Full blast reviews of missing or nested DIVs are a waste of your time that could be better spent on your startup. If you're looking for UI help on your corp or other products (which could use a refresher), lets chat.