but isn't the best team to have one of each of the shapes? Why do we have to choose which shape is the best?
Short fat engineers are undervalued
171–180 of 269 posts
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#172I would add that deep skills, especially when expressed in years of experience, are often indicative of having worked in a bubble, and may not even generalize to other applications of the same tech.
Cases where someone has actually gotten progressively "deeper" as they continue to work in the same area are (anecdotally) outliers. It's much more common to have just spend a lot of time doing more of the same.
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#173I suppose the paradigm for aging engineers like me would be "crumbling dock" rather than "T shaped": Quite a bit of breadth, with depth in various places, except that when you rely too much on it, you may find out that some of it has rotted away in the mean time.
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diversity. I've had a conversation with a few bosses where at some point I stopped to say words to the effect of, "It's like you think I expect everyone a the project to be like me. I don't." A project with just me would have problems too. But every project needs at least a couple of people who think like me, which we aren't accomplishing. This whole expert thing isn't tenable on a long term project. The expert will…
The ideal is an expert who sets up the project, builds the guard rails, creates the patterns and basically sets up a framework for everyone to use. Then they teach everyone how to use it and why And from then it’s a mentoring role. The expert spends more time PR-ing and adding to the framework than building end product features. They build stuff that touches every feature. Force multiplier is the game.
agree - in my view, if you're not designing for the 'hit by a bus scenario', you're not an expert, irrespective of technical knowledge
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#175Earlier 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.
Halo Effect, baby.
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 joi…
You wouldn't say you have deep knowledge of JS & front end frameworks?
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#177Good "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.
Exactly! At the bottom of the organization, your boss can be better than you on all dimensions. Towards the top, you are better than your boss at your job. It gets wider and wider, culminating in a CEO who is worse at tech than the CTO, worse at finance than the CFO, etc. At those levels, your actual skill is in driving experts to results.
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#178Specialist vs generalist is a false bifurcation in the article's context. There's really just one dimension: influence. You have only breadth but you can convince teams to move in the direction you like, and you will be valued. You have depth yet the depth is of no use to solve your team's challenges, then your depth will not be valued.
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#179In 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 could imagine it happening, if you've worked as a contractor on 12-18 month gigs per company for the last 5 years, testing things out and getting a feel for what areas you like to work in the most.
Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued
#180In 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…
>PM's are good at figuring out the theta, and Engineers are good at the r.
I'm only familar with the options definition of theta and the reproductive strategy of r. Could you expand? Something like, PM's are good at long term (e.g. our product needs this feature, then this feature) and Engineers are good at fine detail (e.g. the feature should work like this)?