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What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

faculty.washington.edu

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Re: What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

#81

Post by jwdunne »

enraged_camel wrote: post #79
jwdunne wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a relief. Three kids mandate 9 to 5 work hours. There isn't much quality time or mental energy to dedicate after that. It's a relief because whatever energy I have left I spend on books, articles, papers. Those things have helped my 9 to 5 in a big way. I bring what I learn to the job. It doesn't beat hands on practice. I do itch to work on practice projects and I'm hoping when the kids are a little older, I'l…

>>In any case, my kids are my number one. The day my first was born was the day my motivations and my reason for being shifted. Your kids should be your number one priority, absolutely. Make no mistake though: when you have kids you are trading off professional development outside of work for raising a family. Nothing wrong with that, but the trade off definitely is there. People who ambitiously work on personal proj…

Yep and I'd have it no other way. Before kids, I used to be like that.

If I "ambitiously worked on side projects", I'd at best miss times I'll never get back and at worse be downright neglectful.

That's a "trade off" I haven't thought twice about making. There is no mistake. As I said, my kids are number one.

In fact, I'd argue it isn't much of a trade off at all. Time with my kids is infinitely more valuable than time spent on my career.

Someday :)

Re: What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

#82

Post by segmondy »

vmarsy wrote: post #13

I don't get the "9 to 5 wouldn't make you a great engineer" about not being passionate, some people are passionate but have other life obligations like kids or other activities. Being personable: "Can I have a beer with this guy?" is the worse in my opinion. I care about your professional skills and if you're communicating well, but you definitely don't have to be a beer buddy, we might have 15 years difference, a ve…

If you don't get it, you will never get it. 9-5 won't make anyone a great anything. What makes people great is not what happens from 9-5 but what happens from their 5pm-9am.

9am-5pm, we do for others, 5pm-9am we do for ourselves. Life obligations or not.

Re: What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

#83

Post by jwdunne »

jdcskillet wrote: post #66
jwdunne wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a relief. Three kids mandate 9 to 5 work hours. There isn't much quality time or mental energy to dedicate after that. It's a relief because whatever energy I have left I spend on books, articles, papers. Those things have helped my 9 to 5 in a big way. I bring what I learn to the job. It doesn't beat hands on practice. I do itch to work on practice projects and I'm hoping when the kids are a little older, I'l…

I couldn’t agree with you more. I wish I could do more than give you an upvote, so here is an internet cheers and just know there are a lot of people who feel the same way. I also love what I do, read when I can, but at the end of the day I work hours which allow me to be with my kids and wife as much as possible. I hope to keep getting better, to become a great engineer, but I will take the slower road if it means m…

Exactly the same :) the guilt of not spending time with my kids and my wife is too much. There have been times where I've tried to sit down and work on something but it's no fun when there's a strong feeling of "I should be spending this time with my family".

The other thing I've noticed is that the separation and challenge of raising children has made me more productive. You don't know stress until you've had a newborn. There are things at work that used to affect me and I look back now and think "how was that even a problem?"

Re: What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

#84

Post by jschwartzi »

internetman55 wrote: post #34
vmarsy wrote: post #13

I don't get the "9 to 5 wouldn't make you a great engineer" about not being passionate, some people are passionate but have other life obligations like kids or other activities. Being personable: "Can I have a beer with this guy?" is the worse in my opinion. I care about your professional skills and if you're communicating well, but you definitely don't have to be a beer buddy, we might have 15 years difference, a ve…

I've had coworkers who were obese, childless at a relatively advanced age (around 40), poor relationship with their significant other, etc. tell me about how they spend their downtime making sure their manager meets their deadlines and studying documentation, sometimes working til 2 in the morning. I'd rather just get laid off and collect unemployment for a few months then spend another week ruining my life like that…

Yeah, I'd rather have people in my life and things to do that don't involve making computers do stuff for money. If that makes me a bad engineer then our standards are fucked. I was on that track for several years, but it's not worth it. And I've built some good stuff and gotten a lot done since giving that up.

Re: What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

#85

Post by jschwartzi »

deepGem wrote: post #76
vmarsy wrote: post #13

I don't get the "9 to 5 wouldn't make you a great engineer" about not being passionate, some people are passionate but have other life obligations like kids or other activities. Being personable: "Can I have a beer with this guy?" is the worse in my opinion. I care about your professional skills and if you're communicating well, but you definitely don't have to be a beer buddy, we might have 15 years difference, a ve…

I don't get the "9 to 5 wouldn't make you a great engineer" As an experienced engineering manager this is what I've come across - Some of the engineers who put a 9 to 5 clause, are usually the obstinate engineers, who are not very productive during the hours of 9 to 5, but won't make up by working extra hours. The motto is 'This is all I'll deliver, live with it'. Perhaps, this bias factors in and a generalization em…

Yeah, it's not about being unwilling to occasionally work overtime. The thing 9-to-5'ers are railing against is that overtime is being taken for granted. It's that projects are planned with unrealistic deadlines assuming we'll burn our lives away meeting them.

Re: What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

#86

Post by newfoundglory »

luckydata wrote: post #5
lordnacho wrote: post #2

Seems to boil down to the same old tropes that apply to every kind of work, and every kind of person. A good {worker} works hard, works well in a team, is self-reliant(!) blah blah. A good person is honest, forthright, etc. Outside of very specific fields I haven't seen anyone come up with specific qualities that identify great workers. And the useful attributes will be specific to a field. For height for basketball…

It is definitely "ability to stay on task". The difference between a great engineer and a mediocre one is the latter will just get distracted, stop working the problem and decide to go for good enough. The great ones will work the problem, try multiple angles until something doesn't just work but offers the right balance of simplicity, elegance, future proofing and does the job well. You can't get there if every 5 mi…

Huh, I would probably include "the ability to stop at good enough" in my criteria for greatness. I've worked with people who couldn't resist looking for a better solution instead of checking in the one they had - even for time critical bug fixes.

Re: What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

#88

Post by Aaargh20318 »

jwdunne wrote: post #29
jasonjei wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't get the "9 to 5 wouldn't make you a great engineer" about not being passionate, some people are passionate but have other life obligations like kids or other activities. I think what the engineer is trying to convey is that a great software engineer thinks about code beyond just the job. I don't think the engineer literally means being a workaholic or the literal 9am-5pm shift, but the engineer has pet proj…

That's a relief. Three kids mandate 9 to 5 work hours. There isn't much quality time or mental energy to dedicate after that. It's a relief because whatever energy I have left I spend on books, articles, papers. Those things have helped my 9 to 5 in a big way. I bring what I learn to the job. It doesn't beat hands on practice. I do itch to work on practice projects and I'm hoping when the kids are a little older, I'l…

> The day my first was born was the day my motivations and my reason for being shifted.

One of the many reasons I remain childfree.

Re: What Makes a Great Software Engineer? [pdf]

#90

Post by darepublic »

At the end of the day this seems to me to be still anecdotal and not very testable. Would it be possible, given the code history of n number of developers + quality of the output code, to create a predictive model of a software engineer's 'greatness'? Seems daunting and fraught with potential problems but of a lot more value than just the typical platitudes; 'honesty, creativity, passion' (take three virtues, earthporn background etc)
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