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Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

stkbailey.substack.com

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Re: Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

#61

Post by seymourhersh »

hot_gril wrote: post #60
shubb wrote: post #6

Earlier in my career I felt a lot of disgust at bad code and bad solutions. Sometimes it tye badness was really effort due to unfamiliarity or not instantly understanding what I was looking at.my laziness. Sometimes it was because it disagreed with what ever framework or methodology I was using to give me confidence in the face of ignorance. I feel like an imposter but at least I know design patterns so this guy who…

I'm a young guy working with way more tenured and experienced programmers who didn't want management positions, preferring to code. Respectfully to them, I can't stand what they do. They obsess over details that do NOT matter to the business, and our whole department is paralyzed like this. Meanwhile big-picture things like internal APIs are either neglected or too big-brained for anyone to understand. I think they'r…

How do you know the details don’t matter? Often, not paying attention to the details leads to technical debt.

Re: Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

#62

Post by hot_gril »

seymourhersh wrote: post #61
hot_gril wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a young guy working with way more tenured and experienced programmers who didn't want management positions, preferring to code. Respectfully to them, I can't stand what they do. They obsess over details that do NOT matter to the business, and our whole department is paralyzed like this. Meanwhile big-picture things like internal APIs are either neglected or too big-brained for anyone to understand. I think they'r…

How do you know the details don’t matter? Often, not paying attention to the details leads to technical debt.

I know they don't matter when I end up being the guy to rewrite and own it, as has been my main job the past 4 (edit: 5 now) years.

Re: Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

#63

Post by feoren »

shubb wrote: post #6

Earlier in my career I felt a lot of disgust at bad code and bad solutions. Sometimes it tye badness was really effort due to unfamiliarity or not instantly understanding what I was looking at.my laziness. Sometimes it was because it disagreed with what ever framework or methodology I was using to give me confidence in the face of ignorance. I feel like an imposter but at least I know design patterns so this guy who…

> It's code. No one is going to read it. It will be replaced next year.

Then it truly is awful. Deeply awful. It sounds like you've never progressed past dealing with terrible code, so you have my condolences. Good code is read. Good code is not replaced in a year. Even most bad code is not replaced in a year. Truly you live in a world of absolute shit code.

Re: Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

#65

Post by vineyardmike »

idopmstuff wrote: post #39
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked the majority of my career at an "elite" Japanese corporation. It's one that has a brand pretty much synonymous with "Quality." Many of my peers were among the finest engineers and scientists in the world. I was often the dumbest guy in the room, and I'm smarter than the average bear. Dealing with these folks could be infuriating . Every time I would suggest orthogonal approaches (because, like, software is d…

I think the other thing that "over-engineered" can mean is code that's unnecessarily good for its purpose. If you're building a quick demo of a product to get user feedback, and you write perfect code that's highly maintainable, you've wasted time - better to throw together something as quick as you can and rebuild it if it's actually going to be used by/sold to customers. That's really overengineering in my mind - d…

My advice to younger engineers is ALWAYS to remember demos don’t get rewritten. if a demo appears works, some one will want to ship it as is.

Re: Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

#66

Post by thefaux »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #20
michaelt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> however in contexts where there are objective criteria of quality elitism is just being a professional good at his job. Imagine I look at the Linux kernel source code and I feel it's lacking in automated integration tests, and that C is a poor choice of language for security-critical code. Am I a competent professional, applying objective quality criteria? Or am I an arrogant dilettante, to imagine I know better th…

Tell Linus his code sucks. That should end well.

Linus has a terrible attitude.

Re: Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

#67

Post by dwhitney »

plaguepilled wrote: post #30

Interestingly, I feel like this sort of attitude is a real issue at the precise moment the author describes it as a boon. When you are early to mid career, it is crucial to look for ways to amplify the good you can do in your workplace and solidify your brand as an individual. To do this, you should be looking, ironically, to elevate others. Doing so is the only way to build a reputation that people are going to acti…

You can elevate others while pushing your ideals - once you truly understand something, you can teach it.

Re: Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

#68

Post by randomdata »

idopmstuff wrote: post #39
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked the majority of my career at an "elite" Japanese corporation. It's one that has a brand pretty much synonymous with "Quality." Many of my peers were among the finest engineers and scientists in the world. I was often the dumbest guy in the room, and I'm smarter than the average bear. Dealing with these folks could be infuriating . Every time I would suggest orthogonal approaches (because, like, software is d…

I think the other thing that "over-engineered" can mean is code that's unnecessarily good for its purpose. If you're building a quick demo of a product to get user feedback, and you write perfect code that's highly maintainable, you've wasted time - better to throw together something as quick as you can and rebuild it if it's actually going to be used by/sold to customers. That's really overengineering in my mind - d…

> If you're building a quick demo of a product to get user feedback, and you write perfect code that's highly maintainable, you've wasted time

Any time I thought I could shortcut my way to a demo by relaxing on perfect code/maintainable code it has always ended up taking just as much time and often longer.

Re: Elitism as the mid-career growth engine

#70

Post by JohnFen »

shubb wrote: post #6

Earlier in my career I felt a lot of disgust at bad code and bad solutions. Sometimes it tye badness was really effort due to unfamiliarity or not instantly understanding what I was looking at.my laziness. Sometimes it was because it disagreed with what ever framework or methodology I was using to give me confidence in the face of ignorance. I feel like an imposter but at least I know design patterns so this guy who…

I went through a similar evolution. Now, I don't judge the code I read. If I can understand it and it works correctly, it's fine.

I think it's a good thing. Much of what used to get me irritated (and, from my observations, what gets other irritated) are just matters of style, and what style is being used isn't really important.

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