Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
bellmar.medium.com
Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
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Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#2[deleted]
Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#3These articles always skip over the all important context: What is the engineering team supposed to accomplish?
> After a baseline level of competency is satisfied, who you hire does not matter.
For your average CRUD web app this is obviously true. For the Manhattan Project it’s obviously false. Most engineering work falls somewhere in-between.
Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#4off topic - will the cliched human tendency of saying "X is just Y" ever end ?
Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#5In an "X is just Y" comparison, a good heuristic to determine whether someone is being a human being is to ask whether the comparison reduces the humanity out of the concept. This kind of thing is sociopathic.
Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#6These articles always skip over the all important context: What is the engineering team supposed to accomplish? > After a baseline level of competency is satisfied, who you hire does not matter. For your average CRUD web app this is obviously true. For the Manhattan Project it’s obviously false. Most engineering work falls somewhere in-between.
As far as I understand the author, it's always obviously true. She just ups the baseline to genius level if you're on the Manhattan project.
Which makes the statement mostly tautological: Hire only people capable of doing the work.
Maybe she doesn't want you to hire overqualified people, and wants you to shift focus on what qualities the team as a whole is missing.
All of this never makes it out of hiring 101 teritory, of course.
Update: s/he/she/
Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#7off topic - will the cliched human tendency of saying "X is just Y" ever end ?
It’s just human nature
Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#8More true in SW engineering than other fields. If you have lots of legacy infrastructure and you have a few engineers that really understand that technology then those nodes in the network can overrule almost anything. Hiring is made difficult because there may not that many people with the necessary background so now your hands are tied.
Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#9These articles always skip over the all important context: What is the engineering team supposed to accomplish? > After a baseline level of competency is satisfied, who you hire does not matter. For your average CRUD web app this is obviously true. For the Manhattan Project it’s obviously false. Most engineering work falls somewhere in-between.
As far as I understand the author, it's always obviously true. She just ups the baseline to genius level if you're on the Manhattan project. Which makes the statement mostly tautological: Hire only people capable of doing the work. Maybe she doesn't want you to hire overqualified people, and wants you to shift focus on what qualities the team as a whole is missing. All of this never makes it out of hiring 101 teritor…
I mean, is it true even then?
I know it doesn't work like that, but as a first approximation we can imagine that people working on the Manhattan project would be able to write some javascript or whatever given the chance, while the opposite isn't true. So you would still want to hire the best people you can get your hands on: maybe you underestimated the difficulty of the current project, or the next one will be harder. Anything else is just Pareto-inefficient.
Re: Engineering Teams Are Just Networks
#10These articles always skip over the all important context: What is the engineering team supposed to accomplish? > After a baseline level of competency is satisfied, who you hire does not matter. For your average CRUD web app this is obviously true. For the Manhattan Project it’s obviously false. Most engineering work falls somewhere in-between.
As far as I understand the author, it's always obviously true. She just ups the baseline to genius level if you're on the Manhattan project. Which makes the statement mostly tautological: Hire only people capable of doing the work. Maybe she doesn't want you to hire overqualified people, and wants you to shift focus on what qualities the team as a whole is missing. All of this never makes it out of hiring 101 teritor…
“She”, I think.