Short fat engineers are undervalued • Hacker News Board

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#151

Post by username90 » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

pcstl wrote: post #137

superbcarrot wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still restricts you from getting many of the jobs that require narrow specialization. Specializing on the fly only works to a certain extent and only if you get the opportunity to do so in the first place.

In my experience, "narrow" professionals tend to heavily overestimate what they bring to the table, which makes them not very hard to outcompete.

Switching technology is easy, switching domain is hard. You can't specialize in a technology, that is just nonsense, you specialize in a domain.

Or several domains if they are simple enough. Like, the typical needs of a web product are simple enough that you master how to do the database, back end and front end. You wont be able to do the back end or database at Google scale, but you can master doing them at typical scale and I'd actually argue that Google scale is a different domain entirely with a different set of skills, you need a different specialist to handle that problem and he wont be able to efficiently solve your small scale needs either.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#152

Post by falcolas » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

annoyingnoob wrote: post #31

When I was younger I used to say that I was a jack of all trades, master of none. Many years later I feel like a jack of all trades, master of many. I no longer fit any of the profiles presented here.

I’ve heard it called “paint drip” since you have a broad scope, with a lot of various length depth lines.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#153

Post by naebother » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:15 AM UTC

Expressing ideas as pseudo-graphs is overvalued.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#154

Post by scarmig » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

tenarchits wrote: post #88

pb7 wrote: post #3

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

Here’s a hot take on that front: “ The well-known association between height and earnings is often thought to reflect factors such as self esteem, social dominance, and discrimination. We offer a simpler explanation: height is positively associated with cognitive ability, which is rewarded in the labor market.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709415/

The issue with that theory is that height is significantly more correlated with labor market outcomes for men than for women. Naive models of what you're suggesting (where e.g. negative gestational or early environmental influences are correlated with disrupted height growth and cognitive abilities) would result in men and women both showing the correlation.

A secondary point is that a correlation between height and cognitive ability existing in a world where children suffer poverty/malnutrition/exposure to lead does not imply that a correlation between height and cognitive ability exists in a world without that suffering, so studies using data from the 50s and 70s might have limited relevance for the present day.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#155

Post by grumple » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

robertbalent wrote: post #19

Is it really true? A lot of companies are focusing on hiring "short fat" engineers. Especially companies having "dev ops" engineering model, where engineers must be able to work on all stages of the product lifecycle - from design, development, testing, to deployment and operations.

Agree - most job postings I see call for experience with an ever-increasing number of disparate technologies. And full-stack web development necessitates it until you've grown the team to a large size.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#156

Post by lamontcg » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

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…

I tend to see a lot of highly promoted "short and fat" principal engineers and other internal thought leaders who lack depth. In fact the career path seems to top out if you prefer being an expert in something rather than jack of all trades and able to talk about any subject.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#157

Post by lxe » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

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…

> If you are a generalist and you feel undervalued, you're likely in the wrong project or too involved in phases of a project where your contribution can't move the needle significantly anymore.

My general take is that generalists would excel in small scrappy disorganized organic teams, while "specificists" would do well in teams with high level of organization and management structure. Unfortunately, large organizations tend to push out generalists, as structure increases, and their value in the eyes of management decreases.

I think a large organization should have both kinds of teams. This kind of alludes to Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma -- "well managed" big orgs should be internally disrupted by small-scale "startup" style teams, and those scrappy organic type of teams need generalists.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#158

Post by GuB-42 » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

Good "short fat engineers" are not undervalued at all, the reason they are not hired often is because they are the boss!

A wide profile is typically what you want as a boss/executive/entrepreneur. With technical knowledge but also artistic, legal, people and of course business skills. This is what you need to run a company. And as you reach your limits, you start to hire experts.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#159

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

treis wrote: post #86

nullspace wrote: post #23

In my career, I have met exactly one short fat engineer with >5yrs of exp that I was impressed by. That person is now a Product Manager at a FAANG company (albeit PM-ing highly technical stuff). I bring this up because I think there is a very good analogy to the point that the author is making and the distinction between PM and Engineers. Broadly put, PM's are good at figuring out the theta, and Engineers are good at…

>met exactly one short fat engineer with >5yrs of exp that I was impressed by I'll go so far as to say that they don't really exist. I'm not sure how you can spend 5 years and not learn at least one thing in depth. You'd have to rotate technologies every 6-12 months and there's not that many technologies.

On the spectrum from compilers to machine learning to frontend, there are plenty of technologies.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#160

Post by jbluepolarbear » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

I made an account to give my perspective. I call my self a generalist because I don’t know the correct term. You can put me on any team and I can learn, adapt, and improve any system you put me on. I’m not the best at coming up with new ideas, but I can take any idea, implementation, etc and combine them all to fit whatever need. I tend to build systems, make them stable, teach people the how and why, and then move on to another project. I thrive at companies that allow me to choose my projects and allow me to learn and build new things.