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> The situation Rachel is talking about where the person is well-known among a significant fraction of their industry for their expertise in X. I don't know th

> The situation Rachel is talking about where the person is well-known among a significant fraction of their industry for their expertise in X. I don't know the specifics of Rachel's parable, if any. But by and large, the people who are most well known in industry for 'expertise in X' are the devrel / tech evangelists whose job it is to go on stage and be an expert, for one hour at a time (and perhaps a few extra hours on the show floor surrounding the conference). Well, the on-stage demos they execute only have to live as long as the lecture, and you don't have to fix bugs so much as rework the preso to avoid them. It's a long march from a proof of concept to production readiness, and I've seen one or two stories on HN about people who got burned hiring high profile devrels to lead an infra buildout. > sometimes either their belief in X is too strong ... or, ... the monetary and career-enhancing incentives are high enough to overcome any unease they may have One scenario I've seen play out: you hire a core maintainer for a product you depend on, but should probably be transitioning away from. The maintainer you typically don't have comparable expertise in anything else, so they might as well apply for unemployment before telling your boss you recommend against it. Which I suppose is covered in 'monetary incentives' but with tinge of regret about the whole thing, especially if hired away from some a more stable role.

pjmlp 5y ago
You also have those whose consulting career is fully based on being 'experts in X', being on stage doing talks on X, is the mean to sell themselves as 'experts in X', alongside writting books about how cool X happens to be no matter what.
vosper 5y ago
> But by and large, the people who are most well known in industry for 'expertise in X' are the devrel / tech evangelists whose job it is to go on stage and be an expert, for one hour at a time (and perhaps a few extra hours on the show floor surrounding the conference). When I think of "experts in X" I usually think of the people who created or maintain the thing, or who're active in the Github issues. I guess some of those people might be considered tech evangelists, but I don't think I could name a single devrel person.

pjmlp 5y ago

You also have those whose consulting career is fully based on being 'experts in X', being on stage doing talks on X, is the mean to sell themselves as 'experts in X', alongside writting books about how cool X happens to be no matter what.

vosper 5y ago

> But by and large, the people who are most well known in industry for 'expertise in X' are the devrel / tech evangelists whose job it is to go on stage and be an expert, for one hour at a time (and perhaps a few extra hours on the show floor surrounding the conference). When I think of "experts in X" I usually think of the people who created or maintain the thing, or who're active in the Github issues. I guess some of those people might be considered tech evangelists, but I don't think I could name a single devrel person.