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A world-class software engineer would spot the leaky abstraction of ranking engineers linearly. The internet reaches everywhere. If you can make an HTML page

A world-class software engineer would spot the leaky abstraction of ranking engineers linearly. The internet reaches everywhere. If you can make an HTML page with an alert("hi there") script, congratulations, it can reach everyone in the world, you are now a world-class software engineer. This bit from Venkatesh Rao's "The Office According to the Office" seems appropriate: "Instead, Dwight found relief in the graded, performance-oriented worlds of school and varied medieval-guild-like worlds, such as farming, animal husbandry and karate. His attempts to understand the world of management, which is decidedly not a world of grades or guilds, are based entirely on peripheral guild-like elements. He is the only one excited about the Survivor-style successor-selection event Michael arranges (in the bus on the way over, he asks, “Will there be business parables?”)...In Dwight’s world, everything worth learning is teachable, and medals, certificates and formal membership in meritocratic institutions is evidence of success. Even where play behaviors are concerned, the Dwights of the world can more easily get lost in points-and-rules worlds...To Dwight, everything is a formal contest, and there are always authority figures who provide legitimacy and rankings."

tuesdayrain 8y ago
OP was clearly asking what makes someone a high quality engineer, so focusing on his specific word choices to respond with the "hello world" of web development is a total non-answer in my opinion.
- lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
  What the parent post is demonstrating is how much the OP's question is a non sequitur. Quality is always going to be measured by domain so asking for a list of measurable qualities outside of context is unanswerable. Skills that amount to the "hello world" of web development can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to an expanding or new company, but are worth less than pennies to a Netflix. Trying to measure quality without context is, imo, one of the biggest drivers to the cluster fuck that is tech recruiting.
- farazzz 8y ago
  I think they were just joking around

tuesdayrain 8y ago

OP was clearly asking what makes someone a high quality engineer, so focusing on his specific word choices to respond with the "hello world" of web development is a total non-answer in my opinion.

lordCarbonFiber 8y ago
What the parent post is demonstrating is how much the OP's question is a non sequitur. Quality is always going to be measured by domain so asking for a list of measurable qualities outside of context is unanswerable. Skills that amount to the "hello world" of web development can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to an expanding or new company, but are worth less than pennies to a Netflix. Trying to measure quality without context is, imo, one of the biggest drivers to the cluster fuck that is tech recruiting.
farazzz 8y ago
I think they were just joking around