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7) Don't call people engineers when the appropriate term is "developer" or "programmer"
Yes, yes, and more yes. When programmers say "possible," they mean before the heat death of the universe. That doesn't mean all possible things are automatically trivial, despite their apparent obviousness.
7) Don't call people engineers when the appropriate term is "developer" or "programmer"
If you apply cleverness to solve problems, you're an engineer. Engineering is the verb form of ingenious.
"Don’t pretend to be more technical than you are. Especially in the Bay Area. First of all, it’s incredibly transparent (even to non-technical people), and you will lose all credibility. It also pisses off engineers. " Seriously. Please don't condescendingly explain something technical, incorrectly, to someone who already understands it. AHHHHRGG!
On the other hand, it teaches patience. Patience is worth a lot. When I first began tutoring comp sci students, I learned that, even among the technically inclined, you will need to sit through an enormous amount of misunderstandings and mind-numbing attempts to keep the ol' neurons firing just so. Think you have patience? Try teaching.
I picked up tutoring on the side to earn some extra money. As a side-effect, I feel like it's helping my skills in dealing with clients, programming, and teaching.
EDIT: Also, I love pair programming. Don't know about other people, but I feel as though I'm easily twice as productive on my normal days, even though I might be on an absolute roll by myself a couple times a week. It also seems to be easier to avoid design pitfalls or unnecessary debugging with an extra set of eyes on the code (as it's written).
7) Don't call people engineers when the appropriate term is "developer" or "programmer"
7) Don't call people engineers when the appropriate term is "developer" or "programmer"
As long as it's not "rockstar". :) Check out the amusing discussion that happened when a recruiter innocently asked for a ROR "Superstar": http://groups.google.com/group/boston-rubygroup/browse_threa...
I had the experience (that I imagine a lot of people share) of being hired by a non-technical founder in a start-up, who then wanted to micro-manage and give input on every minute decision that went into the building of the UI, even to the detrement of the user experience.
Along with "don't pretend to be more technical than you are", I would add "Trust the engineer/dev/ux guy/programmer to do what you hired them to do". I had the experience (that I imagine a lot of people share) of being hired by a non-technical founder in a start-up, who then wanted to micro-manage and give input on every minute decision that went into the building of the UI, even to the detrement of the user experien…
7) Don't call people engineers when the appropriate term is "developer" or "programmer"
Our friends with the iron ring (if Canadian) are very sensitive and misusing the term engineer will elicit tears.