4 ms·
I struggle a little bit with this. I _do_ think there are two (or more) classes of developers: there are clearly those who bounce among the FAANG, might become
by md_ 6y ago
I struggle a little bit with this.
I _do_ think there are two (or more) classes of developers: there are clearly those who bounce among the FAANG, might become senior staff or engineering leadership, and, yes, tend to be worldly, well-read, often went to top universities.
Conversely, there are "developer" jobs where the interviewer asks if you have ever used $technology_of_the_day, where the opportunity for growth is limited, and "code monkey" is a pretty apt descriptor.
That's, unfortunately, pretty accurate, in my experience.
Is big-O notation important here? In my experience, not really. But _knowing_ _how_ _to_ _think_ is. Unfortunately, big-O interview questions are a not-very-good filter for "can you think", just as top universities, working at some _other- FAANG, etc, are not-very-good filters for that.
It sucks. I don't like that this essay entrenches one of those crude filters. But the reality it describes is probably not too far from the truth.
- the_only_law 6y agoThere’s an HN comment I have saved that describesthe categorization closest to what I’ve experienced. I don’t treat these sort of reductionisms as immutable truths because 1) there’s always enough outliers to make them fall apart and 2) there are a number of different ways you can categorize people. Sure you might have a model where people fit into A and B but someone else has their own equally valid model where people fit into X Y and Z Anyway here’s a link to the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12079697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12079697
- md_ 6y agoI like that! Thanks! In truth, though, I always felt that the large size of "group 1" was an indictment of "group 2". Put differently, I sometimes joke about big companies like LinkedIn or Facebook: "Why does it take thousands of engineers to run a website?" ;)