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"How easy it is to become one" much to every talented engineer's chagrin. If I had a dollar for every engineer who writes unmaintainable, non-tested code that d

by Grimm1 7y ago

"How easy it is to become one" much to every talented engineer's chagrin. If I had a dollar for every engineer who writes unmaintainable, non-tested code that doesn't scale or even manage a company's current needs particularly well I'd be rich. I think we need to go in the opposite direction and I know I'm not alone in that thinking.

twblalock 7y ago
> If I had a dollar for every engineer who writes unmaintainable, non-tested code that doesn't scale or even manage a company's current needs particularly well I'd be rich. A lot of those engineers you describe are rich too, because engineering pay is not tied to skill as much as to being in the right company, e.g. FAANG companies pay large salaries to average engineers and startups pay low salaries to pretty much everyone.
- Grimm1 7y ago
  Yes and often startups are the ones taking a risk to solve more challenging problems with technology versus the FAANG like companies who operate in large or multiple markets that have predictable money in them for example ads or e-commerce. The pay and overall wealth in tech are tied to some ethically questionable problems and the fact startups can't pull top talent to solve hard problems that are still potentially vastly profitable is worrying. I expect things in the startup world to be even more uphill at least with tech talent in the next decade unless there is a major shift in incentives, this however, will require either restructuring the average equity agreements or early investments with larger money for larger salary for key early employees.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > "Yes and often startups are the ones taking a risk to solve more challenging problems with technology versus the FAANG like companies who operate in large or multiple markets that have predictable money in them for example ads or e-commerce." Never worked a FAANG, I see. They have plenty of risky projects with challenging technology problems that they spin up to try to enter new markets. You don't hear about most of them because, like most startups, they often don't work out and die quietly.
    - opportune 7y ago
      A lot of FAANG engineers also work on infra, OS, security, private/public cloud, tooling, etc. which have impacts on the company bottom line but aren’t necessarily visible as external products. It’s not just 100 people doing ads and 30,000 other people playing ping pong and trying to outsmart each other with Haskell.
    - Grimm1 7y ago
      That's nice, except the majority of FAANG engineers will never see one of those projects.

by Grimm1 7y ago

twblalock 7y ago

> If I had a dollar for every engineer who writes unmaintainable, non-tested code that doesn't scale or even manage a company's current needs particularly well I'd be rich. A lot of those engineers you describe are rich too, because engineering pay is not tied to skill as much as to being in the right company, e.g. FAANG companies pay large salaries to average engineers and startups pay low salaries to pretty much everyone.

Grimm1 7y ago
Yes and often startups are the ones taking a risk to solve more challenging problems with technology versus the FAANG like companies who operate in large or multiple markets that have predictable money in them for example ads or e-commerce. The pay and overall wealth in tech are tied to some ethically questionable problems and the fact startups can't pull top talent to solve hard problems that are still potentially vastly profitable is worrying. I expect things in the startup world to be even more uphill at least with tech talent in the next decade unless there is a major shift in incentives, this however, will require either restructuring the average equity agreements or early investments with larger money for larger salary for key early employees.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > "Yes and often startups are the ones taking a risk to solve more challenging problems with technology versus the FAANG like companies who operate in large or multiple markets that have predictable money in them for example ads or e-commerce." Never worked a FAANG, I see. They have plenty of risky projects with challenging technology problems that they spin up to try to enter new markets. You don't hear about most of them because, like most startups, they often don't work out and die quietly.
  - opportune 7y ago
    A lot of FAANG engineers also work on infra, OS, security, private/public cloud, tooling, etc. which have impacts on the company bottom line but aren’t necessarily visible as external products. It’s not just 100 people doing ads and 30,000 other people playing ping pong and trying to outsmart each other with Haskell.
  - Grimm1 7y ago
    That's nice, except the majority of FAANG engineers will never see one of those projects.