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Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

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Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#191

Post by hkarthik »

davesims wrote: post #116

I do all of those, and I am definitely not a genius. Nor all that rare. Most of the projects I've worked on in the last 5 years have had several devs who could go end-to-end, and the ones that weren't were working towards that goal. It's really not rocket surgery, it's just a matter of applying yourself over time and every few months acquire new skills in an essential area. CSS, JS, Ruby, TCP/IP, HTTP/REST, UI/UX, SQ…

Great comment, Dave.

Would you say over the years that you've oscillated between points of the stack, based on the needs of your current team? I've found that to be the case for me.

At my last job I did a lot of front end work, at my current gig I'm focused on the backend. I enjoy the oscillation and try to keep interesting side projects where I focus on the opposite of what I do in my day job.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#192

Post by dfischer »

My role is exactly this. I find it more the case because I like to be a "jack of all trades" and understand the entire spectrum.

My true expertise lands in the front-end development side of things but I can do it all. I prefer not to though. It's a job for multiple people. However, having the ability to understand all the layers is a big plus when managing/leading a team.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#193

Post by cr4zy »

asolove wrote: post #9

I think the problem is not that one person can't have both of these skills, but that it is hard to play both roles on the same project unless you have a lot of discipline. The engineering mindset and the UX design mindset optimize for different things. Even if you are excellent at both, it helps to have someone else forcing you to get the UX right when you're doing the engineering work, and to make the engineering po…

I was an artist most life and learned engineering when I was 20. It was extremely difficult but I did well and graduated at the top of my class. I can still draw and paint, but creating beautiful web interfaces is very hard for me. Like you're saying, it's not for lack of ability. It's a curse of knowledge.

When you design a UI as an engineer, you're thinking long term. Like make the whole thing white so that new features can be added in easily. Also, the logo is going to need to look good on white anyway for email footers, Facebook apps, etc..., so just make header background white. Then you may have integrations with third-party widgets. All will support white best.

Also, things that 'look' good often are not usable. Like text below 11px, and low contrast shades of text may not be visible to older folks. I see this stuff all the time on sites with 'awesome' design.

Also, images for backgrounds, corners, buttons etc... slow the page load down and don't allow for easy extensibility or iterating. So if I can't do it with CSS, I don't do it.

Page load time, non-buginess, and iteration leading to smooth functionality are the most important parts of UX, IMO. Making the site look like a piece of art does none of these, but I think art gets confused with UX too often. Do you visit this site for the beautiful design? How about Google or Facebook?

If you spend the time to do beautiful design and functionality like Apple, you can create something where the beauty does not detract from usability. But, that takes somewhere on the order of 10x the resources since they're doing 10 prototype designs, refining 3 of them, and only keeping one. If you're trying to create a market, then that makes sense. However, if you're trying to create the most useful product in an existing market, then you're wasting time IMO.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#194

Post by prodikl »

sbisker wrote: post #108

About six years ago, I decided to become a "desingineer", by accident. Here's how it went down: After getting a BS and M.Eng in Computer Science, everyone was pleased as punched to let me code for them. But I wanted to code and design interfaces as well. What a strange idea - a programmer also making the interfaces. Well, it turned out no one would take me seriously unless I had designed interfaces in a professional…

As a desingineer (not a particularly amazing one), I love the freedom I have to create entire projects front to back on my own and have them look and work great. But I totally agree about the "slotting." If I do one or the either, I feel slighted. If I do both, but get paid the same as if I did one, I feel slighted. I think desingineers are meant to be on their own, not slotted into one or the other in a larger group.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#195

Post by micheljansen »

Mythical and wanted as may be, it is also one of the most misunderstood kind of roles. Bigger companies are simply not used to combine design and engineering in one role and try to push you into one (oh, you can code?). As a jack of all trades, master of none, you are often not taken seriously by either side and have to work twice as hard to prove yourself.

Once you do make it into the right places though, it is an incredibly fun and diverse job. I take most of my satisfaction from the notion that I can go from concept to (prototype) implementation on my own if I have to. It is one of the most empowering feelings in the world.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#196

Post by GFischer »

moe wrote: post #107
asolove wrote: post #9

I think the problem is not that one person can't have both of these skills, but that it is hard to play both roles on the same project unless you have a lot of discipline. The engineering mindset and the UX design mindset optimize for different things. Even if you are excellent at both, it helps to have someone else forcing you to get the UX right when you're doing the engineering work, and to make the engineering po…

but that it is hard to play both roles on the same project unless you have a lot of discipline. For me it's less of a discipline issue and more of a time issue. Both the backend and the frontend take a lot of quality time to do them right. It's simply not effective to have a single person context-switch between them, even when said person is very good at both. I.e. this is one of the situations where two people can i…

Re: "brain-damaged abstractions" - you reminded me of a coworker who could be called a "designeer" (he's a good programmer but he also does decent UI/UX).

The problem is, he ignores deadlines because he hates the brain dead abstractions and bad code, and decides to unilaterally refactor.

I feel sorry for him because I understand that he can't stand the sloppy code, he is working with nimrods and mediocre people (and awful tools), what he should do is quit. (some of the mediocre code is, I admit, mine, I've stopped caring and I just want to build a nest egg to quit)

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#197

Post by davesims »

hkarthik wrote: post #191
davesims wrote: post #116

I do all of those, and I am definitely not a genius. Nor all that rare. Most of the projects I've worked on in the last 5 years have had several devs who could go end-to-end, and the ones that weren't were working towards that goal. It's really not rocket surgery, it's just a matter of applying yourself over time and every few months acquire new skills in an essential area. CSS, JS, Ruby, TCP/IP, HTTP/REST, UI/UX, SQ…

Great comment, Dave. Would you say over the years that you've oscillated between points of the stack, based on the needs of your current team? I've found that to be the case for me. At my last job I did a lot of front end work, at my current gig I'm focused on the backend. I enjoy the oscillation and try to keep interesting side projects where I focus on the opposite of what I do in my day job.

Yeah, absolutely. It's been a matter of looking for new opportunities to do something out of my comfort zone. If you've been doing Rails for a year and an opportunity comes up to do some mobile stuff, take it. If you've been doing css/html for months and someone needs a SQL migration written, do it. If someone needs to configure Passenger/Apache/Resque, etc., be the guy. Get comfortable in Photoshop or Gimp enough to knock out an icon or two. Sketch out wire frames for Product for your next feature if someone already hasn't.

There's usually an opportunity to do all this stuff over time, you just have to be willing to jump on it when it comes up.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#198

Post by dantheman0207 »

sbisker wrote: post #144
moocow01 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in general, being a generalist in any field puts a ceiling on your career path after a while. And like you said the ceiling is not so much about the generalist being mediocre at many things, its more about others getting confused about how you would be best moved up the career track. But the problem with the concept of a career track is that you are on a track defined by other people. I'd say the only way out…

Thats just the thing - while that worked for me working a bit at the forefront of this trend, this doesn't feel like a long term solution. Entrepreneurship != being a desingineer, as the market is clearly showing. A student / aspiring desingineer shouldn't feel forced to start a company too soon simply because we lack the structure to help support that student grow into our industry properly.

I don't think they're forced to start a company. The trick is defining yourself in a way that provides a clear example of your value to a company, and how exactly they can monetize that. That's difficult to do right now, for the reasons you described.

The reason that everyone thinks 'desingineers' should go into entrepreneurship is because of the tremendous advantage this gives them. Bigger companies are failing to capitalize on people with these skills. These same skills allow desingineers to produce higher quality work at a faster pace for a cheaper price then any other combination of programmer and/or designers. This naturally leads to a competitive advantage that can(should?) be capitalized on.

Re: Desingineer – the mythical person every startup is looking for

#199

Post by idan »

sbisker wrote: post #108

About six years ago, I decided to become a "desingineer", by accident. Here's how it went down: After getting a BS and M.Eng in Computer Science, everyone was pleased as punched to let me code for them. But I wanted to code and design interfaces as well. What a strange idea - a programmer also making the interfaces. Well, it turned out no one would take me seriously unless I had designed interfaces in a professional…

Truth.
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