Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#181

Post by thepredestrian » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

jpatokal wrote: post #93

carlmr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The ones I am thinking about are people who pick up new things absurdly quickly; pick up on patterns very easily; have general experience in enough domains to make quick connections; etc. That's my experience as well. Generalists are often the most productive people. A good generalist can often grasp the whole system faster than a niche programming language specialist. And you usually don't need those niche programm…

I hire at a FAANG for two roles where we specifically target generalists: Solutions Architect (design solutions for complex real-world problems) and Technical Solutions Engineer (last line of support for really gnarly cases). Both need people who can cover a lot of ground, and it's hard to be good at either if you don't have significant practical experience and can't traverse the stack from source code to tcpdumps if…

Do you happen to hire co-ops for these type of roles? I have recently had interest in consulting

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#182

Post by sergiotapia » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 1:03 AM UTC

pkd wrote: post #120

_kxbd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talent exists, and is very real. [0] Talent is immensely important, and I find that there's a growing movement to dismiss it and pretend it's all about hard work. Most people can get pretty good at a particular task if they dedicate enough time. But you're never, ever going to be as good as Magnus Carlsen, Terrence Tao, Michael Phelps, Euler, or DaVinci just by hard work and a positive mindset. [0] https://slatestarc…

You don't need talent to be successful. Not every chess player is as talented as Carlsen but there are several thousand chess players making a living as professionals. Using talent as a prerequisite to success in a field is just dishonest.

Put two people on equal effort paths, the talented one is going to come out ahead. 100% of the time.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#183

Post by minipci1321 » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 12:48 PM UTC

oldmancoyote wrote: post #175

minipci1321 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to tell what makes you slower, compared to your 40-ies? We need to prepare ;-)

It's the cumulative effect of lots of things. When I pose a question to my subconscious, it takes longer to get an answer. I make a few more mistakes, especially jumping to conclusions. It takes longer to debug them. Sustaining a train of thought is more difficult as my ADHD is a little worse, but writing out my thought processes (often in Q and A form) helps tremendously. Getting a synoptic view is definitely harder…

Thanks a lot for your answer!

I wonder whether you may be too hard on yourself, how much of this should be written off on the today's objective conditions, and not on subjective aging. I am over 50 and am genuinely interested in the discussion, as I have to maintain my employability for long time to come.

> When I pose a question to my subconscious, it takes longer to get an answer.

This! But I always felt my subconscious gives answers more eagerly the more I load it. These days I cannot load it to the same degree as when I was younger, but there are good explanations: a) the nature of the job is different, nobody will let me go off radar, people now have to take calls even on vacations, let alone in the workdays. b) the nature of issues I am solving is also different, more system-wide now, it is hard to have all the knowledge about a bigger system, and complete knowledge is required to load the subconscious IMO (I think you see what I mean).

> I make a few more mistakes, especially jumping to conclusions

No questions about that one ;-). However, I managed even to extract value out of it. I am debugging issues in complex systems without expensive equipment and frequently without an access to them. Every once in a while I jump and don't land on the target, but overall balance looks good enough for my employer to keep me.

> Sustaining a train of thought is more difficult as my ADHD is a little worse,

But again, isn't the way we do things these days simply very different, prompting this? I recall in my young days there were a dozen of us in a small room, and one could hear flies, well, fly. Also (am not nostalgic of that), not having cheap direct access to the computer (it was either batch submission or the night shift), required careful planning and bracing for any possibility. Now it is much easier to "just rebuild and try", but turns out, this doesn't always save as much time as one would hope.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#184

Post by oldmancoyote » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 6:01 AM UTC

thanatropism wrote: post #180

oldmancoyote wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A lot more experience = a lot more failures." YES. Your failures both form you and inform you at least as much as your successes.

They also make you more pessimistic. Maybe rightly so.

I look at that differently. My favorite epigram goes like this:

Very few worthwhile projects are ever successful on the first attempt. Failure is just another useful metric giving guidance on the re-formulation of the problem and the solution. Failure has nothing what-so-ever to do with guilt.

For the longest time as a young man I did not understand this. I though something was wrong with me because I failed so often.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#185

Post by oldmancoyote » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 6:07 AM UTC

rc_hadoken wrote: post #124

lbriner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might describe what you are referring to: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170206155947.h... I heard somebody say that as you age, you rely more on memory to infer the correct decision whereas when you are young, memories are few and decisions based either on gut feel or the current context. I guess that means that older people are more likely to do something they have already done because i…

Question: do you exercise? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951958/ Let's not lump all older people into the same cognitive malaise. Disclaimer: I'm in my late 20s.

I do. I climbed stairs for 45 minutes four days a week for 2 decades. At 70 I was doing 1780 steps at a time. After my metatarsals complained, I began interval training on a stationary bike. During the summers I scramble up and down the Klamath Mountains looking for gold. It won't last forever, but I'm ok for now.

Re: Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?

#186

Post by pkd » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 12:40 AM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #182

pkd wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need talent to be successful. Not every chess player is as talented as Carlsen but there are several thousand chess players making a living as professionals. Using talent as a prerequisite to success in a field is just dishonest.

Put two people on equal effort paths, the talented one is going to come out ahead. 100% of the time.

"equal effort" in your sentence is very important. Effort is rarely equal and life is not a simulated situation like a race. Success is not a one-variable equation that can be solved with "talent".