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Short fat engineers are undervalued

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Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#141

Post by dangwu »

superbcarrot wrote: post #105
dangwu wrote: post #25

The point that "on a long enough time line, wisdom is always more valuable than knowledge" is pretty irrelevant to tech companies. They hire engineers to get stuff done quickly - not slowly gather "wisdom". The average tenure at a tech company continues to be a few years. Also, I've noticed that entry-to-mid level jobs are great for "short and fat" engineers, but once you start aiming for senior (or higher) level IC…

> If you stay "short and fat", you're setting your career trajectory up for failure. Is staying short and fat really an option? Aren't you always specialising in the problem domain / tech stack that you're currently working with?

Not if you keep switching teams or companies every few years into something new.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#142

Post by iujjkfjdkkdkf »

What I've observed is that people have an easier time when they can assign you a label that fits with their world view. Depth (for some value or depth) provides the tag that (lazy) managers, hr, etc need to understand where you will fit. If you can do a range of stuff, even well, people aren't sure what to do with that, and so often end up focusing on someone else.

I saw that a lot in consulting, where people with what would objectively be a very superficial skillset in some area or another "branded" themselves as being a deep expert, and became the go-to for anything that was perceived as relating to their area.

So I would maybe rephrase as "skinny engineers brand more easily"

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#144

Post by ilaksh »

In my opinion, for most projects what's necessary is to approach from a broadly informed perspective and then dive deep into multiple potential solution strategies to see what direction will work well. Then dive even deeper into the details related to the architecture you have chosen.

The problem with focusing too much on one area is that you can only deal with one particular type of problem and maybe only with one particular type of solution.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#145

Post by centimeter »

wutbrodo wrote: post #102
centimeter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's definitely true that attractiveness indicators correlate with characteristics like intelligence. If you think about it, this shouldn't actually be that surprising; it would be silly if the factors that went into sexual selection had no correlation with survival-boosting traits.

Hm, perhaps I'm reasoning about this correctly, but wouldn't you think the opposite? Being attractive provides evolutionary slack that requires less optimization on other characteristics (like intelligence), and vice versa.

No, I don't think this reasoning holds. What is intuitively considered attractive is itself an evolved trait, so as a meta-evolutionary strategy it almost certainly selects for otherwise desirable traits.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#146

Post by centimeter »

dsr_ wrote: post #117
wutbrodo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, perhaps I'm reasoning about this correctly, but wouldn't you think the opposite? Being attractive provides evolutionary slack that requires less optimization on other characteristics (like intelligence), and vice versa.

Being judged attractive is a cultural thing that varies with time and place. Being judged intelligent is also a cultural thing that varies with time and place. Unless your culture is static for 20+ generations, don't expect much influence of it on evolution.

There are attractiveness signifiers that are not culturally mediated (e.g. clear healthy skin is valued everywhere, extreme obesity or thinness is very rarely valued, being very short is very rarely valued, etc.)

Intelligence also seems to have plenty of culture-independent aspects.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#147

Post by ilaksh »

jodrellblank wrote: post #42
pb7 wrote: post #3

The article itself isn't about this but one could theorize that the headline taken literally is also likely true.

one could devil's advocate speculate the other way as well; e.g. If IQ declines with age, and exercise is a way to slow the decline[1], fatness could reflect lack of exercise and lifestyle which doesn't prioritise exercise, so would you expect to see lower value for fatter engineers in a pure meritocracy? If lower IQ correlates with obesity (" a 10‐point decrease in IQ was associated with a 1.10‐fold increase in the…

Maybe revisit that comment in your mid 40s or 50s.

Up until around age 35 or so, I was generally very lean and did not get noticably fat regardless of my lifestyle.

I know I haven't gotten any stupider. Hormonal changes are the most likely difference for me.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#148

Post by username90 »

> Both dimensions can be useful; but breadth gives us perspective, and thus wisdom

No, it really doesn't. If you haven't ever gone through the work required to become great at something then you lack that perspective completely. If you have gone through that journey at least once you start seeing that journey in other domains as well which gives you a lot of understanding about the field, about engineers, about what projects actually require etc. I really don't see how you can be considered wise without having seen that, not as a software engineer at least. Maybe you could be a great product manager though.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#149

Post by paulryanrogers »

yumraj wrote: post #93
whoisjuan wrote: post #9

The argument of specialist vs generalist is futile. They simple fit in distinct parts of the journey and evolution of a software product. Generalists are highly valuable for many types of orgs and projects especially nascent projects. But sometimes you need the precise output of a specialist to achieve something. If my business has a product that is highly dependent of let's say OpenGL, then an OpenGL specialist will…

As a generalist, I agree with bulk of what you're saying but at least my personal experience seems to echo the fact that generalists in general are undervalued since when someone asks a person "what can you do for me", a specialist always has a better and sharper answer than a generalist - and that makes all the difference. Personally I'll take a generalist any day since specialists suffer from the "if you only have…

Sounds like the 'T' shaped skill set.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#150

Post by smnrchrds »

keybored wrote: post #132
smnrchrds wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the comment you replied to talked about attractiveness in general.

Here’s the comment that that one was a reply to: > I believe there is ample research showing height and attractiveness (one could reasonably consider weight to be one determining factor in attractiveness) do play a factor in career success, compensation, and selection for leadership. Look, only about obesity and height (and mainly height). To which they replied: > I think it goes more the other way around. … Which ma…

I would write a rebuttal, but you have written it for me. "attractiveness (one could reasonably consider weight to be one determining factor in attractiveness)" does not mean "attractiveness (which means weight)".
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