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I was at FB for four years. Some of FB’s engineers are incredibly intelligent, but most are just normal.
by umanwizard 6y ago
I was at FB for four years. Some of FB’s engineers are incredibly intelligent, but most are just normal.
- TulliusCicero 6y agoSame thing at Google. I think the biggest difference between the prestigious/high-paying tech companies and programmers at more conventional companies, is that at the former you find basically no dead weight engineers. At least, I never saw any at Amazon or Google.
- scarface74 6y agoIsn’t a engineer “dead weight” if they work on a project that ends of getting canned a year later? I would say that any engineer that worked on one of the many messaging apps that Google has created was dead weight.
- oh_sigh 6y agoThat's more of a failure of leadership. If the engineers are in the galley rowing, they can all be great contributors to the forward motion of the boat, but it may still crash into rocks nonetheless. You can redeploy "deadweight" engineers who are good engineers but the project fails for business/political/leadership reasons. You can't redeploy actual deadweight engineers who don't contribute anything on an individual basis(or rather, you can, but you wouldn't want to).
- scarface74 6y agoYou can, but how has that worked out for Google? They have been redeploying engineers from one failed non ad product to another for over 15 years.
- TulliusCicero 6y agoJudging by Google's continued growth, I'd say pretty damn well?
- scarface74 6y agoNot as far as diversification it hasn’t.
- logicslave 6y agoTheyre just a monopoly.
- spaced-out 6y agoIn that scenario I would say it's the management that's dead weight.
- scarface74 6y agoFrom a revenue producing perspective, if you are working on a product that isn’t producing revenue and won’t ever produce revenue, you are dead weight.
- TulliusCicero 6y agoI'm talking about the engineer's personal competence, not the organizational competence of their wider org.