You don't want to hire "the best engineers" • Hacker News Board

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#321

Post by abustamam » Fri, Sep 05, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

jama211 wrote: post #269

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the most important kind of great engineer: the guy who's got adequate technical skills but fantastic executive functioning skills. A lot of bright engineers target the "fun" problem or will otherwise get distracted, leaving a lot of simpler tasks ignored. Every team needs the dev who opens up Jira, opens a sorted list of tickets, and just knocks them down one by one, all day every day. Without them, th…

I know that guy, he’s me. Gotten me further than some brilliant but eccentric developers I know.

Hey me too! I was actually surprised to learn that most developers aren't the type to just plow through a list of Jira tickets. Like, I thought that was the name of the job for engineers. Apparently not!

I don't think either type of engineer is better or worse than the other, but I do believe, as someone else mentioned, that both types are absolutely necessary to a team.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#322

Post by abustamam » Fri, Sep 05, 2025, 6:08 PM UTC

mac-mc wrote: post #206

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the most important kind of great engineer: the guy who's got adequate technical skills but fantastic executive functioning skills. A lot of bright engineers target the "fun" problem or will otherwise get distracted, leaving a lot of simpler tasks ignored. Every team needs the dev who opens up Jira, opens a sorted list of tickets, and just knocks them down one by one, all day every day. Without them, th…

IMO you need all types. A well-functioning team has people with different strengths that can get pathological when they go too far, and they cover for each other's strengths. The "just do it" high work ethic guys like that are great, but they can sometimes "just do it" in the wrong direction and don't stand back and ask if we should even do these things. "Mr. strategic" can sometimes stand back a bit too much and ove…

Totally agreed. I feel like companies are always looking for engineers who can do both, but in reality, a good engineer CAN do both, but they tend to excel and thrive in one or the other.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#323

Post by gilli » Fri, Sep 05, 2025, 8:56 PM UTC

Loved this article, funnily enough I wrote something in a similar vein, due to my frustrations with nonsense requirements, yesterday: https://gilli.is/journal/the-best-designers-know-nothing-abo...

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#324

Post by gyomu » Fri, Sep 05, 2025, 9:02 PM UTC

Centigonal wrote: post #37

There is no such thing as "the best engineers." Some engineers are definitely better than others, but once you pass the bar of "really smart, great work ethic," the tech tree diverges pretty dramatically. Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (l…

Notch, Carmack, Spolsky may have engineering in their skillsets, but they are also product (game) designers and executives (and world class ones at that). I don’t think that’s really what people want when they’re looking to hire an engineer for their startup.

As for Bill Atkinson… looking at his Wikipedia page, looks like he was indeed a top notch engineer in the 80s, but doesn’t seem like he worked on anything noteworthy after that? Definitely not in the same league as the other 3 IMO.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#325

Post by vouwfietsman » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

klas_segeljakt wrote: post #88

It brings Steve Jobs' quote to mind: "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do" Companies who generically look for "the best engineers" think their problems will be solved if they can just hire someone smart and tell them what to do. They say they want "the best engineers" but then their job descriptions and interview processes screa…

Jobs: "We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do"

Jobs 10 minutes later: "You did a terrible job because you are a terrible person and you should feel terrible you even exist"

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#326

Post by alfredbones25 » Mon, Sep 08, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

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