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> Most software engineers are bad and refuse to admit it to themselves (which would let them get better) Well… not to be confrontational, but in the context of

> Most software engineers are bad and refuse to admit it to themselves (which would let them get better) Well… not to be confrontational, but in the context of this post, you seem to be implying that if most software engineers (which would, statistically speaking, include me) were “better”, they could put software together faster. I have to say, the implication bothers me, as does my suspicion that it’s a sentiment shared by most non-programmers out there. The problem is, there is a lower limit on how long it can possibly take to complete a programming task - and I think even the MBAs will concede that that lower limit is higher than the time spent typing out the words that make up the program. So, if we accept the premise that “good programmer” = “fast programmer” with no reasonable, objective measure of how fast fast is, the people doing the judging will always end up using the metric “how long I wanted it to take”, which is usually about a day for any task.

shados 10y ago
I did say the answer to this problem was "all of the above". We're talking about human beings dealing with each other. That means there's an infinite amount of problems. The ones I mentioned are just a few out of many. They're just often overlooked by engineers for obvious reasons. I hate to use the 10x developer meme...but I will. Personally, I've been around a while...and I worked at a lot of places. A lot of obscure little startups, some non-tech companies, many big and huge names... And 10x doesn't even begin to describe the difference between what some companies consider a "super star" and some consider "bottom of the barrel". I've seen big name tech companies do with an army in a year, what some of the engineers I worked with would have done in a few weeks, alone, -in the same environment- (thats the important part). Once you've seen that happen enough, you just can't deny it anymore. The difference between engineers is so great, it matters a whole lot. At one company, a PM will come with vague or shitty requirements and the engineers will run away with it and produce garbage over several months... while another dev would just call it out for the bullshit it is, point out what's wrong and pump out a correct solution by the end of the day. And all that doesn't even consider the time some will spend googling basic shit while others can just infer the right thing by thinking about it for a sec. The end result is a massive difference in $$$.

shados 10y ago

I did say the answer to this problem was "all of the above". We're talking about human beings dealing with each other. That means there's an infinite amount of problems. The ones I mentioned are just a few out of many. They're just often overlooked by engineers for obvious reasons. I hate to use the 10x developer meme...but I will. Personally, I've been around a while...and I worked at a lot of places. A lot of obscure little startups, some non-tech companies, many big and huge names... And 10x doesn't even begin to describe the difference between what some companies consider a "super star" and some consider "bottom of the barrel". I've seen big name tech companies do with an army in a year, what some of the engineers I worked with would have done in a few weeks, alone, -in the same environment- (thats the important part). Once you've seen that happen enough, you just can't deny it anymore. The difference between engineers is so great, it matters a whole lot. At one company, a PM will come with vague or shitty requirements and the engineers will run away with it and produce garbage over several months... while another dev would just call it out for the bullshit it is, point out what's wrong and pump out a correct solution by the end of the day. And all that doesn't even consider the time some will spend googling basic shit while others can just infer the right thing by thinking about it for a sec. The end result is a massive difference in $$$.