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Short fat engineers are undervalued

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Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#91

Post by marcinzm »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

The argument of specialist vs generalist is futile. They simple fit in distinct parts of the journey and evolution of a software product. Generalists are highly valuable for many types of orgs and projects especially nascent projects. But sometimes you need the precise output of a specialist to achieve something. If my business has a product that is highly dependent of let's say OpenGL, then an OpenGL specialist will…

>I think there's a point in every innovation where the generalist contribution declines sharply.

That why as another post commented they move into management or product at larger organizations. They get to move the needle and apply their generalist knowledge even to mature projects.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#92

Post by alexjplant »

jtxx wrote: post #70
whoisjuan wrote: post #9

The argument of specialist vs generalist is futile. They simple fit in distinct parts of the journey and evolution of a software product. Generalists are highly valuable for many types of orgs and projects especially nascent projects. But sometimes you need the precise output of a specialist to achieve something. If my business has a product that is highly dependent of let's say OpenGL, then an OpenGL specialist will…

> you're likely in the wrong project or too involved in phases of a project where your contribution can't move the needle significantly anymore to expand on this, I've found most of my happiness as a generalist in early stage startups. to me , a larger company looking for a generalist with no concrete role is a sign that they don't have their stuff together. obviously there are exceptions to this rule - some companie…

> larger company looking for a generalist with no concrete role is a sign that they don't have their stuff together.

Or that their culture is such that they have entrenched, stovepiped personnel that don't venture out of their specific knowledge domains and they need somebody to bridge that gap.

An analogy that I've used far too often when describing software deployment in traditional orgs is one of the dev team and IT playing tennis with the grenade that is the software. With each volley back and forth they give each other nigh-useless information - the operations team will tell the dev team that it crashed without sending logs and that it's because of random setting X that they pulled out of a hat, then the dev team will tell the ops team that said configuration value is hardcoded but that can't be the problem because it runs perfectly on their dev machine, and so on and so forth. Having somebody to mediate this interaction so that it's actually productive is inherently invaluable to, y'know, getting actual work done.

Unfortunately it's not particularly valuable from a business perspective because if your org is operating this way then it means that they place greater value on the performance of "software engineering" than the actual value added by the software produced. So basically what you said.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#93

Post by yumraj »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

The argument of specialist vs generalist is futile. They simple fit in distinct parts of the journey and evolution of a software product. Generalists are highly valuable for many types of orgs and projects especially nascent projects. But sometimes you need the precise output of a specialist to achieve something. If my business has a product that is highly dependent of let's say OpenGL, then an OpenGL specialist will…

As a generalist, I agree with bulk of what you're saying but at least my personal experience seems to echo the fact that generalists in general are undervalued since when someone asks a person "what can you do for me", a specialist always has a better and sharper answer than a generalist - and that makes all the difference.

Personally I'll take a generalist any day since specialists suffer from the "if you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail" syndrome.

Having said that, my 1 career advice to anyone would be, become a specialist in 1-single thing, and then become a generalist in everything else. I'm not that, but I feel that that I would have been best served if I had been that.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#94

Post by centimeter »

tenarchits wrote: post #88
pb7 wrote: post #3

The article itself isn't about this but one could theorize that the headline taken literally is also likely true.

Here’s a hot take on that front: “ The well-known association between height and earnings is often thought to reflect factors such as self esteem, social dominance, and discrimination. We offer a simpler explanation: height is positively associated with cognitive ability, which is rewarded in the labor market.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709415/

I think it's definitely true that attractiveness indicators correlate with characteristics like intelligence. If you think about it, this shouldn't actually be that surprising; it would be silly if the factors that went into sexual selection had no correlation with survival-boosting traits.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#95

Post by x86ARMsRace »

meheleventyone wrote: post #37

None of these things exist. A taxonomy of three kinds is entirely inadequate to describe the potential of anyone working today. These sorts of quick fix mental models are pretty poisonous. There are literally recommendations for all three saying how useful they are. This is some of the dumbest snake oil to infect software development.

All these sorts of things were cooked up in the depths of some HR department somewhere, likely by people who fundamentally don't understand technical skillsets. They provide some level of false utility by allowing people to compartmentalize otherwise highly complex systems (knowledge sets) into simple ideas.

Skillsets are highly complex assemblies that can't be summed up or generalized. Doing things like that give us the hilariously misguided strategies that make HR folks hand out Myers Briggs tests for culture fit checks. I know for myself that a lot of my skills are actually just fancy applications of thought processes and theory, expressed in code. Trying to box that into this goofy trichotomy will just confuse someone.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#96

Post by hiimtroymclure »

nullspace wrote: post #23

In my career, I have met exactly one short fat engineer with >5yrs of exp that I was impressed by. That person is now a Product Manager at a FAANG company (albeit PM-ing highly technical stuff). 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…

I spent 7 years in product before making the transition to being a developer 2 years ago. I've successfully made the jump but definitely had hoped I'd be in a better position than I am now. Obviously this could be me, but I have been pretty surprised how companies/startups seems disinterested in my PM past. I think it certainly gave me a broad perspective on how to ship software customers love, and how successful teams work. It likely is still my inexperience but nonetheless no one seems to care about broad knowledge.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#97

Post by superbcarrot »

meheleventyone wrote: post #37

None of these things exist. A taxonomy of three kinds is entirely inadequate to describe the potential of anyone working today. These sorts of quick fix mental models are pretty poisonous. There are literally recommendations for all three saying how useful they are. This is some of the dumbest snake oil to infect software development.

The point isn't a taxonomy of 3 types but the layout in two axes - breadth and depth of expertise. Those are quite real and useful to think about when considering hiring or your own career development.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#98

Post by haskellandchill »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

The argument of specialist vs generalist is futile. They simple fit in distinct parts of the journey and evolution of a software product. Generalists are highly valuable for many types of orgs and projects especially nascent projects. But sometimes you need the precise output of a specialist to achieve something. If my business has a product that is highly dependent of let's say OpenGL, then an OpenGL specialist will…

> you're likely in the wrong project

The point is there are less project slots for generalists to be in right now.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#99

Post by LandR »

u678u wrote: post #63
pb7 wrote: post #3

The article itself isn't about this but one could theorize that the headline taken literally is also likely true.

I'd agree if its most other jobs but I thought devs were one job where appearance doesn't matter as much?

I think it applies to any job where you have to interview with someone face to face. Like it or not they are probably going to judge on your appearance.

Re: Short fat engineers are undervalued

#100

Post by bluefirebrand »

pkaye wrote: post #47
bluefirebrand wrote: post #34

"Junior in every department" really struck hard for me. I know just enough of basically everything to get by or as a starting point, but I lack that really deep knowledge that comes from using a small group of skills and tools for years. I feel that switching languages and frameworks and tools and OSes a bunch of times early in my career has really held me back. I don't mind supporting my team, what I don't like is h…

How big a team are you working in? In most places I've worked the teams (or company) were small enough that even new hires would get a change to work on something big if they have the capacity.

I have basically always been on teams of 5 devs.

Maintaining legacy stuff.

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