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If you’re not building complicated new systems and just gluing things together, you’re not doing engineering? 1) definitely gate keeping 2) good engineering is
by i386 7y ago
If you’re not building complicated new systems and just gluing things together, you’re not doing engineering? 1) definitely gate keeping 2) good engineering is about what not to build as much as it is what to build.
- nemothekid 7y agoI agree - shouldn't you feel most proud of the products you've built that help actual people who pay you, rather than your coworkers for which those internal tools wouldn't need to exist if not for your customers. I'd rather have engineers working on products that customers would miss.
- adamsea 7y agoEveryone is motivated by different things. It makes sense that some people are motivated by the craft of software development, which overlaps with, but is not the same as, product development or running a successful business.
- vector_spaces 7y agoYes, exactly. The view that such work just constitutes writing "glue" is super reductive. So much time is also spent empathizing with others: talking to stakeholders, understanding existing processes, determining requirements, and simplifying. So if we can reduce the solution to glue instead of needing to write a complicated system, that's hands down a win.
- i386 7y agoAny engineer who comes up with a solution that requires less new code being written is a more valuable engineer IMO. Less code is less time spent on building then maintaining code for all eternity. If you go through the build/buy/partner decision, and decide to buy or partner with development comprising of glue code - then that's probably the optimal solution for your org. And you made the right engineering choice.
- patrec 7y ago> Any engineer who comes up with a solution that requires less new code being written is a more valuable engineer IMO Of course less code is good, all things being equal. But taking that idea literally, basically no tooling code gets ever written and people develop some sort of learned helplessness around dysfunctional workflows that are just about feasible but fantastically wasteful of engineering time. This tends to happen a lot, also because tooling is often perceived by management as an unnecessary luxury.
- i386 7y agoAgree, In my own experience it’s only orgs with a min 50 to 100 developers who can afford to have a single developer (it was me!) out working on productivity tools.
- patrec 7y agoJust because you're not doing much (any?) interesting engineering doesn't mean you're not creating a lot of value. But it probably does mean that if you really deeply care about engineering in itself you should reconsider your employment options. But learning when you can just glue and how is a super-valuable skill, even if some of your work involves pushing the envelope. The worst engineers are not those who just glue stuff together, it's the people who cv-drivenly develop 100x too slow, resource intensive and broken buzzword bingo clusterfucks that could be solved, correctly and cheaply, with a page of shell script.
- foobarian 7y agoYup, it sure is nice to have a monopoly and be able to throw money at 100+ engineer teams to invent cool new tech from scratch. I'd like to see you try this at a startup.
- i386 7y agoDaddy AdWords always has a spare $100M