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Short fat engineers are undervalued

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Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#161

Post by jbluepolarbear »

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…

I am more of a square than an I, T, or Fat I. I have vast knowledge about a lot of stuff. I am very knowledgeable about every engineering aspect of my field (video games) and can be integrated and lead any team in the stack.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#162

Post by bradlys »

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.

> 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.

That's kinda how SV is these days though. It's very common for engineers to jump companies every 1-2 years for a long period of time and the companies very frequently undergo a shift in technologies while engineers are there. So, unless you join FAANG or some super stable company - I could see it being natural from just how the market works that you end up having a very short fat engineering career.

For myself, the only consistent thing from my five jobs over the last 7-8 years is that they've all had JavaScript (actually - one had CoffeeScript but then we migrated to JavaScript when I was leaving) - but that's mostly just because of the nature of web development. In the middle of my sixth job search right now and it's looking to be a backend role that won't be in JS now. So, there goes that stability...

Personally: fullstack LAMP -> fullstack Python + Django -> frontend role with backbone/knockout/angular and majority of vanilla JS and CSS -> fullstack Python + Django + CoffeeScript -> Fullstack Angular + Node -> Backend Node with shift to TypeScript near the end

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#163

Post by w0mbat »

pb7 wrote: post #35
the_only_law wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ngl for a minute before clicking I was slightly curious if this was some random study of the literal interpretation.

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.

I noticed at Microsoft that the tallest people always got promoted. It never made any sense to me - we weren’t playing basketball.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#164

Post by hertzrat »

greggturkington wrote: post #121
vocram wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that’s true even more if they are bald and with a beard.

The balding greybeards are among the most respected engineers of my peers

But not necessarily when they apply for their next jobs, unfortunately

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#165

Post by 8note »

the_only_law wrote: post #28
pb7 wrote: post #3

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

Ngl for a minute before clicking I was slightly curious if this was some random study of the literal interpretation.

I haven't read it yet, but looked at the headline and debated if it was related to the FAT file system and there was a language called short.

I'm still interested in why engineers who know FAT should be valued more. It seems like an interesting thing to look up

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#166

Post by peach45 »

This is shortsighted. The reason deep knowledge is more valuable is that learning anything stops being fun, and therefore presents less of a biological pull, after the first few milestones. There's a logarithmic decay in reward to effort put in. So naturally you're going to want engineers that have put in the hard work to build their knowledge, rather than the posers who read about engineering but never actually got into the nitty gritty. Why? Because it becomes rare, and scarcity drives up value. Simple!

EXAMPLE: Why would I care if my plumber also moonlights as a surgeon if all I care about is getting my faucet fixed without him passing the buck due to perceived complexity?

Those things are great in a dinner party setting, but in the professional workplace you want professionals not dabblers. Whenever I meet a self styled "generalist" nowadays I scoff. It's not hard to read HN daily and pick up on the lingo and memes and fake your way to 99% of a "generalist" in both knowledge and impression, but that doesn't make one a good engineer.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#168

Post by michaelthiessen »

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #161
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…

I am more of a square than an I, T, or Fat I. I have vast knowledge about a lot of stuff. I am very knowledgeable about every engineering aspect of my field (video games) and can be integrated and lead any team in the stack.

Cool

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#169

Post by kelnos »

peach45 wrote: post #166

This is shortsighted. The reason deep knowledge is more valuable is that learning anything stops being fun, and therefore presents less of a biological pull, after the first few milestones. There's a logarithmic decay in reward to effort put in. So naturally you're going to want engineers that have put in the hard work to build their knowledge, rather than the posers who read about engineering but never actually got…

I think your premise is flawed. Generalists are not "dabblers". They are professionals just as much as specialists are. Either you have a very odd (and incorrect) view of how software development is done, or you're presenting a straw man that doesn't have anything to do with the article's premise.

I find most specialists useless when it comes to architecting and building a full system, and often when they are a part of a team, focused on their specialty, they build in a way that is difficult to fit into the whole.

Obviously there are good things, too: my knowledge of things like data science and graphics is limited; if a part of a project called for deep knowledge in those areas, I'd be happy to have a specialist on the team. But unless they are more of the "T-shaped" type the article talks about, they need a lot of hand-holding when it comes to anything outside their domain.

Generalists bridge that gap, and handle necessary concerns that most specialists don't even consider, let alone know how to handle.

(Full disclosure: I consider myself a generalist, though at times I have ended up diving deep into particular areas when projects have required it.)

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#170

Post by nucleardog »

peach45 wrote: post #166

This is shortsighted. The reason deep knowledge is more valuable is that learning anything stops being fun, and therefore presents less of a biological pull, after the first few milestones. There's a logarithmic decay in reward to effort put in. So naturally you're going to want engineers that have put in the hard work to build their knowledge, rather than the posers who read about engineering but never actually got…

You’re not arguing against a generalist (varying depth over a handful or many areas), you’re describing, sure, let’s call it a poser or dabbler (little to no depth in any area).
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