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Question for everyone. Doesn't everyone know in the industry what makes great software engineers? And that usually there are only "blockers" that stops you from

Question for everyone. Doesn't everyone know in the industry what makes great software engineers? And that usually there are only "blockers" that stops you from being great? Let me give an analogy. If you're paid to play basketball wouldn't you know what makes a great basketball player? If you're playing pro basketball, you can be a great basketball player. The only reason why you can;t be great is because there are certain things outside of playing basketball that you have to worry about. I guess i'm asking cause it's kinda annoying when people tell me what makes a great engineer. Anyone I know who has been doing this a few years knows what makes a great engineer. It doesn't mean they want to be a great engineer because the trade-offs arent just worth it

BeetleB 6y ago
No, they do not. There isn't even a consensus on what "great" means. You play basketball in a very static environment. The rules don't change from game to game, or team to team. The duration of a match is constant. How well the team performs is a well known metric. People do not do engineering in a static environment. The needs asked of one changes from team to team. The quality metrics vary from application to application. The people he/she relies on varies even when you stay in the same team. An engineer who is really useful in one company may be harmful to another one.
- llimllib 6y ago
  I suspect you haven’t played much basketball! The same player on different teams can be much better or worse - some players fit in with almost any team and others need a team built around them. (I don’t disagree with your larger point! Just that basketball is an example of a “very static environment“ relative to programming)
- cortesoft 6y ago
  > You play basketball in a very static environment I would strongly disagree - basketball is a highly dynamic environment, simply because you have an opponent. Everything you are trying to do, you have someone else trying to stop you. They are as adaptive as you are. Because of this dynamism, many players who were great in previous eras couldn't survive in the modern era (and vice versa, really)... for example, most centers who played even 10 years ago would be abused in the modern game by opposing centers shooting threes. It simply wasn't part of the game 10 years ago, and now everyone does it. There was literally a player (Roy Hibbert) during the transition who was a star before and suddenly became unplayable as teams adapted to the new environment. He was out of the league in 2 years.
- username90 6y ago
  Software engineer is too many things. The person implementing a database engine working in a huge tech organization and the person implementing non scaling crud services as the only technical person in the company are both software engineers but what they need to be great are almost completely disjoint.
cortesoft 6y ago
People always seem to want to pretend it isn't a factor, but natural talent also matters, for both basketball and software engineering. In basketball, it is quite easy to prove that some people are simply unable to ever be a great basketball player; there has never been an NBA player shorter than 5'3, only 25 shorter than 6'0, and only 10 under 5'10. Are you really telling me NO ONE shorter than 5'3 ever decided the trade offs were worth it? No, at some point, it doesn't matter how hard you work or whether or not you have any outside issues; some people simply don't have the genetic attributes needed to be great. Now, everyone can get better, but we all have some limit to our abilities that we approach but don't cross as we work harder and practice. Not everyone who isn't great should feel like it is because they didn't choose to be great, some people (most of us, probably) just aren't capable of being that great. Of course, most of us aren't that close to our limits, and it is impossible to know what those limits are.... but they are there nonetheless.
- maccard 6y ago
  > In basketball, it is quite easy to prove that some people are simply unable to ever be a great basketball player; there has never been an NBA player shorter than 5'3, only 25 shorter than 6'0, and only 10 under 5'10. Are you really telling me NO ONE shorter than 5'3 ever decided the trade offs were worth it? Anecdotal, I'm 6'1. At a middle school age, I was _hounded_ into playing basketball (until they realised I had no talent whatsoever, or any inkling that I wanted to attempt to improve that). There's definitely a selection bias in who gets started playing basketball in the first place. Back on topic, > some people simply don't have the genetic attributes needed to be great. I think this is a massive stretch. I think it's fair to say that some people don't have the attributes to be in the top 0.01% of the their game (in baskebtall, there's a few hundred(?) players in the NBA - that's the equivalent of the John Carmack/Peter Norvig types that have come up here), but is there any proof whatsoever of any form that says that an "average-to-poor" engineer can't become a "great" engineer - (in basketball terms, going from the person who can't dribble to the person who absolutely dominates your after-work league consistently)
  - oblio 6y ago
    > Anecdotal, I'm 6'1. At a middle school age, I was _hounded_ into playing basketball (until they realised I had no talent whatsoever, or any inkling that I wanted to attempt to improve that). There's definitely a selection bias in who gets started playing basketball in the first place. This has had a bigger impact than you'd imagine :-) For example quite a few tall football players have been nudged when they were kids to play basketball. But luckily some more open minded coaches let them play and found out that they were actually good. The best example is Jan Koller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Koller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Koller 2.02 (6'8), so definitely towering above most other people :-) But the things is, genes do matter at a certain level. I really think you can't be an NBA player if you're 1.50 (I think that would be about 4'8). No matter how fast or resilient you are. You'll just be outmuscled, dunking will probably be almost physically impossible.
runawaybottle 6y ago
Basketball has almost an endless list of examples of superior talent not excelling compared to those with less talent (this is objectively measured physically, where a player with clear physical advantages doesn’t reach full utilization). There’s graveyards of these cases. There are 6’6 bums in the NBA, top draft picks, that had less of a career compared to say a 5’3 Mugsy Bogues. In Basketball, part of your greatness is how well you optimized for the cards dealt to you. Tech is not that much of a meritocracy like sports, it’s a way to have a living. I’d almost say, the tech industry is not equipped to assess greatness. Since it’s literally people’s livelihoods, we won’t (and shouldn’t) try to analyze this. In sports, if you come out of a top school as a top draft pick, fans will eventually say ‘hey you are a top draft pick but you do about the same thing as someone that went way later in the draft’. We in tech won’t ever go ‘look Facebook, your app looks like the same shit everyone else builds’. It can’t hold up to that scrutiny. Open source is probably the only place where you can objectively assess. It’s not a competition, because if it was, and tech was a sport, fans would tear it up as to what is a 10x engineer. Speaking as a sports fan, they are savage.

BeetleB 6y ago

No, they do not. There isn't even a consensus on what "great" means. You play basketball in a very static environment. The rules don't change from game to game, or team to team. The duration of a match is constant. How well the team performs is a well known metric. People do not do engineering in a static environment. The needs asked of one changes from team to team. The quality metrics vary from application to application. The people he/she relies on varies even when you stay in the same team. An engineer who is really useful in one company may be harmful to another one.

llimllib 6y ago
I suspect you haven’t played much basketball! The same player on different teams can be much better or worse - some players fit in with almost any team and others need a team built around them. (I don’t disagree with your larger point! Just that basketball is an example of a “very static environment“ relative to programming)
cortesoft 6y ago
> You play basketball in a very static environment I would strongly disagree - basketball is a highly dynamic environment, simply because you have an opponent. Everything you are trying to do, you have someone else trying to stop you. They are as adaptive as you are. Because of this dynamism, many players who were great in previous eras couldn't survive in the modern era (and vice versa, really)... for example, most centers who played even 10 years ago would be abused in the modern game by opposing centers shooting threes. It simply wasn't part of the game 10 years ago, and now everyone does it. There was literally a player (Roy Hibbert) during the transition who was a star before and suddenly became unplayable as teams adapted to the new environment. He was out of the league in 2 years.
username90 6y ago
Software engineer is too many things. The person implementing a database engine working in a huge tech organization and the person implementing non scaling crud services as the only technical person in the company are both software engineers but what they need to be great are almost completely disjoint.

cortesoft 6y ago

People always seem to want to pretend it isn't a factor, but natural talent also matters, for both basketball and software engineering. In basketball, it is quite easy to prove that some people are simply unable to ever be a great basketball player; there has never been an NBA player shorter than 5'3, only 25 shorter than 6'0, and only 10 under 5'10. Are you really telling me NO ONE shorter than 5'3 ever decided the trade offs were worth it? No, at some point, it doesn't matter how hard you work or whether or not you have any outside issues; some people simply don't have the genetic attributes needed to be great. Now, everyone can get better, but we all have some limit to our abilities that we approach but don't cross as we work harder and practice. Not everyone who isn't great should feel like it is because they didn't choose to be great, some people (most of us, probably) just aren't capable of being that great. Of course, most of us aren't that close to our limits, and it is impossible to know what those limits are.... but they are there nonetheless.

maccard 6y ago
> In basketball, it is quite easy to prove that some people are simply unable to ever be a great basketball player; there has never been an NBA player shorter than 5'3, only 25 shorter than 6'0, and only 10 under 5'10. Are you really telling me NO ONE shorter than 5'3 ever decided the trade offs were worth it? Anecdotal, I'm 6'1. At a middle school age, I was _hounded_ into playing basketball (until they realised I had no talent whatsoever, or any inkling that I wanted to attempt to improve that). There's definitely a selection bias in who gets started playing basketball in the first place. Back on topic, > some people simply don't have the genetic attributes needed to be great. I think this is a massive stretch. I think it's fair to say that some people don't have the attributes to be in the top 0.01% of the their game (in baskebtall, there's a few hundred(?) players in the NBA - that's the equivalent of the John Carmack/Peter Norvig types that have come up here), but is there any proof whatsoever of any form that says that an "average-to-poor" engineer can't become a "great" engineer - (in basketball terms, going from the person who can't dribble to the person who absolutely dominates your after-work league consistently)
- oblio 6y ago
  > Anecdotal, I'm 6'1. At a middle school age, I was _hounded_ into playing basketball (until they realised I had no talent whatsoever, or any inkling that I wanted to attempt to improve that). There's definitely a selection bias in who gets started playing basketball in the first place. This has had a bigger impact than you'd imagine :-) For example quite a few tall football players have been nudged when they were kids to play basketball. But luckily some more open minded coaches let them play and found out that they were actually good. The best example is Jan Koller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Koller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Koller 2.02 (6'8), so definitely towering above most other people :-) But the things is, genes do matter at a certain level. I really think you can't be an NBA player if you're 1.50 (I think that would be about 4'8). No matter how fast or resilient you are. You'll just be outmuscled, dunking will probably be almost physically impossible.

runawaybottle 6y ago

Basketball has almost an endless list of examples of superior talent not excelling compared to those with less talent (this is objectively measured physically, where a player with clear physical advantages doesn’t reach full utilization). There’s graveyards of these cases. There are 6’6 bums in the NBA, top draft picks, that had less of a career compared to say a 5’3 Mugsy Bogues. In Basketball, part of your greatness is how well you optimized for the cards dealt to you. Tech is not that much of a meritocracy like sports, it’s a way to have a living. I’d almost say, the tech industry is not equipped to assess greatness. Since it’s literally people’s livelihoods, we won’t (and shouldn’t) try to analyze this. In sports, if you come out of a top school as a top draft pick, fans will eventually say ‘hey you are a top draft pick but you do about the same thing as someone that went way later in the draft’. We in tech won’t ever go ‘look Facebook, your app looks like the same shit everyone else builds’. It can’t hold up to that scrutiny. Open source is probably the only place where you can objectively assess. It’s not a competition, because if it was, and tech was a sport, fans would tear it up as to what is a 10x engineer. Speaking as a sports fan, they are savage.