I lived in the library during college.
“The more textbook theory I studied, the better an engineer I would become,” I thought.
Yet when I started...
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Counter-argument: the best engineers are a really diverse bunch of people with lots of different mindsets.
Some may wake up in the morning repeating the credo of Warren Buffet like you describe.
Richard Stallman prefers to lead the Church of Emacs.
Larry Wall is all about religion and linguistics.
Linus Torvalds does things just for fun.
Other are teachers, pedagogues, poets, painters, dancers, mothers, writers, you name it.
Totally fair
Literally nothing in this article has anything to do with engineering.
Everything in this article has to do with a short-term results view of investing, which is basically a virus killing this planet.
Not to say this article isn't true. Every word of it is true.
But it's only good if you define good as "profit."
This comment contains more substance, wisdom, and humanity than the whole shitpost.
I like u bro
All depends on your criteria for a 'good' engineer. Your take seems to be almost exclusively from a business perspective, and to my mind falls more into the realm of 'software project management' - something I don't really consider to be part of engineering at all.
The best developers are the ones who do it for the love of it, and the desire to create, or even the desire to solve their own needs by creating a solution.
The worst developers are those doing it for the money or just as a career, and they come home from work and don't even have any side projects they're working on.
Grading someone based on their hobbies and how they spend free time is really strange, and honestly seems unhealthy. Not everyone wants to make work their focus every waking hour.
Do you judge your mechanic if they don't wrench all day on weekends? Does your electrician suck because they're not wiring projects in their free time?
The best developers are just good developers. What they do in their free time is irrelevant to being a good developer. The worst developers are the worst because they actively suck and have bad practices during work.
In response to this:
I think you're interpreting the direction of the causation to be the exact opposite of what I was saying.
I think the kind of developer Clay describes doesn't even make a distinction between 'work' and other projects - to them it is just development, so they aren't making work their focus at all by doing development (which usually isn't related to their job) outside of the office. They thoroughly enjoy development, and their 'work' is just another project that they happen to get paid for. This isn't to say they're total nerds who shut themselves in their rooms and just code all the time - they're quite often fully functioning, normal (whatever that means) members of society - whose brains just happen to crave the challenge of coding.
Developers like these are generally far more creative and talented than those who see it purely as a job, and if you can find one I would strongly suggest hiring them.
I'm not trying to belittle other developers - there are definitely many great ones around, but over 25 years in the industry I'm pretty sure I know the kind of developer Clay is referring too - and they really are the best (although I 100% understand that the quality of a developer is subjective)
Eh, we'll agree to disagree but I sincerely hope we don't start calling people hot or not based on what they do outside of work. His judgement on that statement (that bad devs are bad because they don't dev outside of work) is a grossly unhealthy outlook.
Yeah I think you got what I was saying. Marissa chose to interpret my observation as being judgmental, on an emotional level, rather than just factual about coding.
"The best developers are the ones who do it for the love of it" is something I claim as a general rule, and it should be obvious that if someone truly loves an activity they do it even when they're not forced to.
Furthermore I challenge anyone to name one single famous intellectual in any STEM field who hasn't loved their work to the point that they did it in their spare time whenever possible.
Great content
Ty Ben!
On the basis of this well written article I have subscribed to your newsletter. Engineering as investing..great analogy for sound project management.
Much appreciated.
Ty msiame!
Despite the praise, your comment actually highlights the whole issue with the article:
Engineering ≠ project management
Thanks bro. Excellent post, it is very wisdom.
I gotchu man
Nice text, and how do you think you could improve this mindset?
Just make sure before you do something that it will actually lead to big improvements, not small ones.
Very good thought and well articulated
Thank you Pavan!
this is great!
appreciated!
You earned a subscriber.
Looking forward to more writings.
Ty Loknath!
Lmfao tho... It would cost $32k and two months for two "engineers" to build out what is essentially a glorified WebRTC demo? That's funny as shit.
On Fiverr I can hire a developer that can build the same thing in 1 week for couple hundred bucks...
Good for you if you don't have to support the code of such "workers for food" afterward. More likely than not you'll pay much more later to someone else to rewrite it from scratch.
The guy behind the article is an "influencer" from the type that makes books like this: michaellin.gumroad.com/l/how-to-be... (Andew Tate like influencer.)
Now you understand why this "article" is so tone deaf ?
nah diversity is important smart people like ibm's hq, sometimes too smart for long run they forget shorterm stuff, can't deny happy go lucky person is needed containering how engineer's should think is like put an eagle on a cage
No they don't. Here is the list of very best engineers en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Star... Charles start draper prize considered one of the 3 nobel prizes for engineering. They all were pioneers, breaking the norms, builders and innovators. They precisely not do what you have mentioned in this blog. So best engineers are people who do stuff they are passionate about, investment, profit does not come into play.
You are confusing between Engineers and Engineering Managers.
Great article, it aligns very well with my experience of working as a developer and I wish to realize it from beginning.
Probably people don't realize or don't want to realize that they work for business, so the best engineer is not the skillest one, or not the hardest working one, but the one who can help business to make good decisions.
Example:
Bob worked hard 2 weeks implementing a very complex task.
Patrick got a similar complex task, but he convinced the customer that it's not important enough to spent much time here, and moved further.
Who is a better engineer?
Even when you work for open source, in a free time, on own project or library, the suggestions still apply. Replace "money" in the article with github stars, npm downloads, etc, and it stays relevant.
Sounds like a profitable engineer but you've also sucked all the fun out of the job. Most of us got into this not to make big short term gains, but because we have a passion for building and coding.
I enjoyed reading this. Thanks! It’s difficult to cultivate this business mindset if I could say.
One of the best titles for post I have ever seen. Love the thoughts behind this.
Why not how should be the first question everywhere, engineering included.
Thanks for sharing. I admire your perspective on this topic.