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Effective Engineer – Notes

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Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#221

Post by [deleted] »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #206
yanilkr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will try to elaborate without trying to insult anyone. It might be harsh but I am sure the author can handle it. First of all look at this sales copy of the book. https://www.effectiveengineer.com/book It looks like a weight loss e-book product designed to trick ambitious people into impulse buying. It tries to build credibility by name dropping "google", "facebook", "insert big company here" every other paragraph.…

You're literally criticizing the book based on it's website cover? To put it mildly, that's not what effective anythings do.

[deleted]

Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#222

Post by jodrellblank »

afarrell wrote: post #201
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #198

I work on a team in which a few people adopted the strategy of doing 20% of the work for 80% of the impact. That leaves the rest of us doing the remaining 80%. If the people doing most of the work are not getting the credit for it, how is it going to play out in the long run?

Why does that 80% need to be done?

How else do you get to 100% of the work done?

Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#223

Post by yanilkr »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #206
yanilkr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will try to elaborate without trying to insult anyone. It might be harsh but I am sure the author can handle it. First of all look at this sales copy of the book. https://www.effectiveengineer.com/book It looks like a weight loss e-book product designed to trick ambitious people into impulse buying. It tries to build credibility by name dropping "google", "facebook", "insert big company here" every other paragraph.…

You're literally criticizing the book based on it's website cover? To put it mildly, that's not what effective anythings do.

You are literally criticizing someone who is criticizing something else. what does that make you?

Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#225

Post by yanilkr »

valuearb wrote: post #211
yanilkr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you are trying to do here. But please go read the sales copy of the book. Everything in that copy is a symptom of "moral decay" in the tech valley. Which one did you purchase? "The master package" to become effective engineer. It makes bold claims like it will make you 10X engineer and it some how guides you to figure out which technologies you need to work that will succeed in the future and keep reading,…

I haven’t paid the author a dime, but did just sign up to get the free chapter of the book, i recommend you read it because it’s his actual advice. My review was it’s pretty good, a bit rushed/compressed, but his advice is very straightforward and all focused on getting more and better work done for your company, how much more team oriented does it get than that? BTW i didn’t see any marketing claim on his site that…

Ok I will engage in this conversation.

First let me look up the author. Let me also just say that I have nothing against this author. I respect his entrepreneurial spirit and I believe he has a great future. But I deeply believe this sales page here is just plain wrong https://www.effectiveengineer.com/book and I strongly feel that experienced people like myself have to speak up when situation calls for it. It is fundamentally sleazy thing to do to other younger minds seeking proper guidance in the tech valley.

Authors resume

https://angel.co/edmondlau

First things I noticed. This person has not stayed at any company for more than 3 years. No strong engineering role titles like architecture or design or scaling roles. Mostly soft engineering roles like testing and growth hacking. as a 30 year experienced person like yourself ask yourself. What kind of serious engineering product can one build in that time period at a company with that roles and how many? In many respectable companies I worked for, a person with this experience level cannot even hire/fire people, interviewing someone is not same as hiring.

Next look at the the github profile vs quora profile.

https://github.com/edmondlau

https://www.quora.com/profile/Edmond-Lau

You can notice, this person is more of a content writer compared to code writer. What sort of engineering skills and expertise do you notice about the author that makes him write a sales page like this?.

https://www.effectiveengineer.com/book

Just like how I said it before, this is an effective nonsense garbage content marketing. The author has no qualifications to be writing a book on effective engineering. It is an insult to people who do actual engineering.

This person is milking his past job experience role at brand name companies to an irresponsible extent. This is not illegal but a very sleazy thing to do.

To people who really care about this topic, please get a good mentor in and around your workplace. Just do not fall for this click baits and gossip about tech companies does not make you effective anything. Engineering skill takes a lot of practice and patience, I am afraid there are no secrets and shortcuts.

Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#226

Post by nine_k »

davidjnelson wrote: post #214
nine_k wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was simpler, it wont command such wages, and would be automated out sooner. Humans' current advantage is the ability to tackle complexity and uncertainty.

Another way to look at it is automation will free people up to solve more important problems.

Yes, those who'll happen to be capable of that by the time.

Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#227

Post by afarrell »

jodrellblank wrote: post #222
afarrell wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does that 80% need to be done?

How else do you get to 100% of the work done?

What I mean is that the number of pieces of work that can be done is some high multiple of the work that you can do. So find the projects that are in the top 20% of impact by starting with “why does this need to happen?”

Of course if someone is only doing 20% of any given piece of work (say, never writing tests or refactoring or doing code review), then yea, that is a big problem.

Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#228

Post by whack »

edmondlau wrote: post #16
IronKettle wrote: post #3

This is totally an incomplete thought, and I'm not trying to be down on this author in particular: It's interesting to see a lot of management thoughts and colloquialisms slowly creep into the "other side" of software development (i.e. the actual developers) and become fairly well-tolerated. We still make fun of phrases like "paradigm" or "synergy", but we're all mostly on-board with phrases like "own " or "growth mi…

It's less about management and technical ability, and more about soft skills and hard skills. A recent Washington Post article shared an analytical study from Google on what made engineers at the company successful: "Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Goog…

"Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills"

Worth keeping in mind that this is true for the culture/environment within Google, not universally. Different companies have different cultures, and the above actually makes me more cynical about the culture within Google. If two people have competing ideas for a engineering solution/implementation, is the winner going to be the one with the best technical merits, or the one best at office politics? Judging from the above study, it seems like Google's culture is less meritocracy-driven and more politics-driven than people think.

Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#229

Post by valuearb »

yanilkr wrote: post #225
valuearb wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t paid the author a dime, but did just sign up to get the free chapter of the book, i recommend you read it because it’s his actual advice. My review was it’s pretty good, a bit rushed/compressed, but his advice is very straightforward and all focused on getting more and better work done for your company, how much more team oriented does it get than that? BTW i didn’t see any marketing claim on his site that…

Ok I will engage in this conversation. First let me look up the author. Let me also just say that I have nothing against this author. I respect his entrepreneurial spirit and I believe he has a great future. But I deeply believe this sales page here is just plain wrong https://www.effectiveengineer.com/book and I strongly feel that experienced people like myself have to speak up when situation calls for it. It is fun…

Your entire argument is just a thinly sourced (anti)appeal to authority argument. You can’t sum up a persons life experience from a short bio and their github history (most of mine is private for example)

If you don’t like specific ideas of his, attack them. But as a 30 year engineer whose managed teams as large as 40 people, while i don’t agree with everything he wrote, lots of it rings true to me.

Re: Effective Engineer – Notes

#230

Post by yanilkr »

valuearb wrote: post #229
yanilkr wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I will engage in this conversation. First let me look up the author. Let me also just say that I have nothing against this author. I respect his entrepreneurial spirit and I believe he has a great future. But I deeply believe this sales page here is just plain wrong https://www.effectiveengineer.com/book and I strongly feel that experienced people like myself have to speak up when situation calls for it. It is fun…

Your entire argument is just a thinly sourced (anti)appeal to authority argument. You can’t sum up a persons life experience from a short bio and their github history (most of mine is private for example) If you don’t like specific ideas of his, attack them. But as a 30 year engineer whose managed teams as large as 40 people, while i don’t agree with everything he wrote, lots of it rings true to me.

That short bio has no qualifications enough to write a book on effective engineering especially making claims like guiding people to become 10x engineer.

I find it difficult for a person with valid credentials in real life support this content marketing fraud.

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