4 ms·

> As a first-year-out-of-school developer, I shadowed an interview once from a "Principle Engineer" at another company. A lot of people don't realize how easy

> As a first-year-out-of-school developer, I shadowed an interview once from a "Principle Engineer" at another company. A lot of people don't realize how easy it is to get impressive titles at very small or low-quality outfits. If it's just you and the CEO running the place, you would be a "CTO" even if you couldn't pass a phone screen for any decent entry-level engineer position. We constantly get resumes from "senior engineers" working for no-name tiny companies and startups. They are often our worst candidates, especially when it comes to hard skills like coding. Reality is that these skills are rare, and no-name outfits will be competing for the rare candidates who can code against all the better employers out there. The results are what you'd expect.

UK-Al05 8y ago
Even at large companies this can happen. Architects and high level engineers can simply go out of touch with current engineering practices simply because it's not their job anymore.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  You know, I heard this claim about "architects" and "high level engineers" before, but I've never seen much evidence for it in real life. How many of these detached astronaut "architects" actually exist? The only real-life example I ever became personally familiar with: academics who were parachuted to some quasi engineering leadership positions thanks to their impressive publication credentials. I wouldn't call these folks "engineers" of any level. They are scientists who head teams that employ engineers.
  - UK-Al05 8y ago
    I defently been at places where the architects define tbr boundary of a microservice, or the api contracts rather actually implement it.
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      But do you know for a fact these "architects" forgot how to code, and would bomb an engineering interview?
      - wallflower 8y ago
        I once walked into a really sharp architect’s office and asked him how it was going. He shrugged and showed me what he was working on: task scheduling in Microsoft Project. He hadn’t coded a line in months. It is not necessarily that the architects don’t know how to code but more lack of opportunities to do so, as they increasingly become a human API between the engineering team and management and execs. Meetings all day, some of them of low value.
        dunpeal 8y ago
        > He shrugged and showed me what he was working on: task scheduling in Microsoft Project. Right, that's not an "architect" then. That's a manager of some sort.
Novashi 8y ago
>We constantly get resumes from "senior engineers" working for no-name tiny companies and startups. They are often our worst candidates, especially when it comes to hard skills like coding. That's funny because I remember not too long ago about complaints regarding Senior Engineers at BigCorp that got too comfy and also couldn't code. It seems the walls are closing in. It's a good anecdote that titles are bullshit in our particular field. It's also why I've opted to remove 'Senior' from my titles for external resumes to avoid people making judgments too soon.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > It's also why I've opted to remove 'Senior' from my titles for external resumes to avoid people making judgments too soon. I wouldn't go quite so far. The fact that titles don't mean much in sub-par outfits doesn't contradict the fact they can mean a lot in solid companies.

UK-Al05 8y ago

Even at large companies this can happen. Architects and high level engineers can simply go out of touch with current engineering practices simply because it's not their job anymore.

dunpeal 8y ago
You know, I heard this claim about "architects" and "high level engineers" before, but I've never seen much evidence for it in real life. How many of these detached astronaut "architects" actually exist? The only real-life example I ever became personally familiar with: academics who were parachuted to some quasi engineering leadership positions thanks to their impressive publication credentials. I wouldn't call these folks "engineers" of any level. They are scientists who head teams that employ engineers.
- UK-Al05 8y ago
  I defently been at places where the architects define tbr boundary of a microservice, or the api contracts rather actually implement it.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    But do you know for a fact these "architects" forgot how to code, and would bomb an engineering interview?
    - wallflower 8y ago
      I once walked into a really sharp architect’s office and asked him how it was going. He shrugged and showed me what he was working on: task scheduling in Microsoft Project. He hadn’t coded a line in months. It is not necessarily that the architects don’t know how to code but more lack of opportunities to do so, as they increasingly become a human API between the engineering team and management and execs. Meetings all day, some of them of low value.
      - dunpeal 8y ago
        > He shrugged and showed me what he was working on: task scheduling in Microsoft Project. Right, that's not an "architect" then. That's a manager of some sort.

Novashi 8y ago

>We constantly get resumes from "senior engineers" working for no-name tiny companies and startups. They are often our worst candidates, especially when it comes to hard skills like coding. That's funny because I remember not too long ago about complaints regarding Senior Engineers at BigCorp that got too comfy and also couldn't code. It seems the walls are closing in. It's a good anecdote that titles are bullshit in our particular field. It's also why I've opted to remove 'Senior' from my titles for external resumes to avoid people making judgments too soon.

dunpeal 8y ago
> It's also why I've opted to remove 'Senior' from my titles for external resumes to avoid people making judgments too soon. I wouldn't go quite so far. The fact that titles don't mean much in sub-par outfits doesn't contradict the fact they can mean a lot in solid companies.