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The article itself isn't about this but one could theorize that the headline taken literally is also likely true.
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 the r.
I think that with the perspectives that short fat engineers have, they can play enormous roles as "PM" or "Engineering Manager", and definitely as ICs during early stages of startups. But they clearly don't enjoy depth, and this can be counter-productive for that 1% of the time where you really, really want depth.
I don't buy the knowledge vs wisdom thing though, there's plenty of wisdom to be gained from going deep into a subject. I'd actually claim that wisdom can only come from depth - though what depth means is different for different roles.
People who think they know something are more likely to be wrong than people who don't think they know anything on a topic. There's a "competence gap" between knowing you know nothing and actually having deep knowledge; it's the "just enough to be dangerous" zone.
Depending on how tall precisely "short fat" is, that can describe an engineer that, more often than not, makes the wrong choice because they know enough to have opinions but those opinions are raw.
Ive always been amazed by the “tall” devs and have one or twice (or more than I’d like to admit) tried to deep dive something always eventually giving up because I have no idea where to obtain the deeper knowledge. Perhaps more realistically, I just have a different type of fat.
The article itself isn't about this but one could theorize that the headline taken literally is also likely true.
Not sure I agree. A "short fat" could theoretically be replaced by a group of "short skinny", whereas a "tall skinny" could only be replaced by another "tall skinny". As value is largely determined by scarcity (supply and demand), this would cause "short fat" to be of lower value.
Is it really true? A lot of companies are focusing on hiring "short fat" engineers. Especially companies having "dev ops" engineering model, where engineers must be able to work on all stages of the product lifecycle - from design, development, testing, to deployment and operations.