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All good! I agree with you, at the time I wasn't one of "the best". But I think there's a couple key things, one of which you touched on. The first is that "th

All good! I agree with you, at the time I wasn't one of "the best". But I think there's a couple key things, one of which you touched on. The first is that "the best" is subjective. To me, the best engineers _are_ the ones who you enjoy working with and don't cause drama or bikeshedding. Some 10x programmer who everyone hates working with isn't "the best". So perhaps it all depends on what traits others are looking for. The other is that as a startup you can try to hire "the best" engineers today, _or_ hire people who you see potential in and can grow with the company. I'd put myself in that latter group, along some of my extremely talented coworkers I mentioned. Having that growth opportunity is part of what attracted me to Faire in the first place, and is a way to compete for talent on more than just comp like the original comment implied.

vasco 4y ago
Thanks for sharing! And sorry again for being harsh, I'm keen on reading some more shares about actual strategies in engineering tooling or others that you worked on to keep things chugging along. The focus on metrics I think is very under-appreciated in our industry and the more we can standardize to compare velocity and easily identify companies that don't give a shit about developer experience and velocity, the better in my opinion. I would say that I believe it's a much happier life the less you think about how good you or your colleagues are and the more you think about the systems and the tools you develop. I really meant what I said about impostor syndrome, I'd be curious what answers you'd get from your engineering team regarding that, if so far you've focused a lot of your internal messaging / culture on "being good", you might find some opportunities for honest feedback and sharing which might get a more tight-knit empowered team, which does wonders for velocity.

vasco 4y ago

Thanks for sharing! And sorry again for being harsh, I'm keen on reading some more shares about actual strategies in engineering tooling or others that you worked on to keep things chugging along. The focus on metrics I think is very under-appreciated in our industry and the more we can standardize to compare velocity and easily identify companies that don't give a shit about developer experience and velocity, the better in my opinion. I would say that I believe it's a much happier life the less you think about how good you or your colleagues are and the more you think about the systems and the tools you develop. I really meant what I said about impostor syndrome, I'd be curious what answers you'd get from your engineering team regarding that, if so far you've focused a lot of your internal messaging / culture on "being good", you might find some opportunities for honest feedback and sharing which might get a more tight-knit empowered team, which does wonders for velocity.