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Exactly my thoughts: neither of the two characteristics ("exceptional-ness" and "loyalty") are binary qualities. Both exist on a continuum, and more importantly
by ben_straub 17y ago
Exactly my thoughts: neither of the two characteristics ("exceptional-ness" and "loyalty") are binary qualities. Both exist on a continuum, and more importantly, they're orthogonal. But the article assumes everyone is either moving up or moving out.
What ABOUT the really good engineer with a family, who's content to stay even if the work isn't bleeding-edge exciting? Are they ignorable just because they don't fit into this model? Do we stigmatize them because they're neither churning nor making partner?
- nickelplate 17y agoThe good engineer should not be doing bleeding-edge work so much as he should be doing things that are challenging even in small ways every now and then, and rewarded for his efforts. I once worked at a small place that has a really, really brilliant architect on staff (easily the best engineer I have worked with so far). He turned down invitations to interview at some rather prestigious tech companies and was happy to remain in his little kingdom. Most of the time he was fixing bugs, adding smallish new features, etc. - i. e. he was not doing cutting-edge stuff. But he had the freedom to improve the code base as a whole. So every time he had to fix a major bug he would do some refactoring that made the code better, not just for him but for the entire team, as this always involved tweaking the APIs he wrote for the team. It is pretty challenging to improve upon something that is already pretty darn good.