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I have been thinking about it too. I think you definitely need people who are more algorithmically inclined in software, but you also need people who can "engin

I have been thinking about it too. I think you definitely need people who are more algorithmically inclined in software, but you also need people who can "engineer". My current take is that the tech industry is so young that we are still struggling with proper definitions of titles and division of labor. In my experience, after school I could do all the hard mathy/algo/data structure things, but I had no idea what REST even meant. So all startups instantly rejected me, while FAANG was very excited to have me. I felt like a huge imposter also, because if I were smart, how come I didn't know all the cool stuff that people at hackathons know.

Waterluvian 5y ago
Thank you for sharing. I love this comment because it feels like you and I are opposite sides of the same coin. When I graduated I had no clue how to correctly statistically validate a complex robotically collected set of bathymetric data or how to mathematically explain Universal Kriging. But I did know how to design and build the data collection workflow, web portal, processing software, and PDF generation. So I was ridiculously effective at my job, but any time I was near the other roboticists, I felt like an absolute fraud. They'd be writing algorithms and formulas on a whiteboard and it was all Greek to me.
andrewprock 5y ago
I think you are describing two different activities. You can make something, and You can engineer something. If what you are building is a complex distributed software system, if you are not aware of algorithms and the implications they have on the system, then you are not engineering, you are just making. And whatever it is you are making is going to fail a lot sooner that if you were aware of the algorithms and the implications.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  You would be surprised by how easy a system designs itself according to it's constrains.

Waterluvian 5y ago

Thank you for sharing. I love this comment because it feels like you and I are opposite sides of the same coin. When I graduated I had no clue how to correctly statistically validate a complex robotically collected set of bathymetric data or how to mathematically explain Universal Kriging. But I did know how to design and build the data collection workflow, web portal, processing software, and PDF generation. So I was ridiculously effective at my job, but any time I was near the other roboticists, I felt like an absolute fraud. They'd be writing algorithms and formulas on a whiteboard and it was all Greek to me.

andrewprock 5y ago

I think you are describing two different activities. You can make something, and You can engineer something. If what you are building is a complex distributed software system, if you are not aware of algorithms and the implications they have on the system, then you are not engineering, you are just making. And whatever it is you are making is going to fail a lot sooner that if you were aware of the algorithms and the implications.

ipaddr 5y ago
You would be surprised by how easy a system designs itself according to it's constrains.