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What’s funny is that in most positions the hard work has nothing to do with any of that. It’s communication, empathy, navigating people-problems and organizatio

What’s funny is that in most positions the hard work has nothing to do with any of that. It’s communication, empathy, navigating people-problems and organizational dysfunction, and working with/around awful systems that you can’t change, while limiting their blast-radius to protect the business (and your own sanity). You can always just google how to invert a binary tree or whatever and get a solid answer in no time. Which means it’s easy shit. Unless you’re one of a few devs doing PhD level work in the industry, that CS-heavy “mathy” stuff’s not the hardest thing you’re dealing with, and being good at that indicates almost nothing about your ability to deal with the hard problems you will encounter on the job. (or else you’re greenfielding at a startup and are doing everything on easy-mode anyway, aside from problems you create for yourself on purpose or by accident)

nh23423fefe 3y ago
Sure, you can pretend developers don't read and write code. Just like people who complain about leetcode pretend the questions are hard and that performance is uncorrelated somehow.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  > Sure, you can pretend developers don't read and write code. Weird. Why would someone pretend that?
varjag 3y ago
Communication, empathy and navigating people is easy: there's a deluge of people capable of doing that. Writing code is hard. Not many people can code at all; even fewer are any good at it. This is why you can easily be unemployed after BA in Communications but have little problem getting a job after high school if you can code.
- remich 3y ago
  In my experience, it's relatively rare among software engineers. So, even if it's over-represented in the general population (which I'm skeptical of), having actual skill at that makes you leaps and bounds more effective than others, once you get up to senior+ level.
  - varjag 3y ago
    I agree good people skills along with technical skills is a huge bonus. But it's still a less common combination among overall candidate pool than good people skills and lacking technical skills.
remich 3y ago
In fairness, the ratio of "just write code" to everything you listed above changes quite drastically as your seniority increases. To be sure, there will always be some senior/staff/principal engineers who sit in a room by themselves and code all day without talking to anyone, but, typically, the more senior you get in an organization the more your job consists of things other than writing code. When you're a junior or a mid, however, writing code makes up the vast majority of your day.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  I was thinking about “just writing code” with the communication and empathy parts, especially, in fact, though you’re right that they also apply (differently, though I’m not sure if it’s more) to more-senior work.

nh23423fefe 3y ago

Sure, you can pretend developers don't read and write code. Just like people who complain about leetcode pretend the questions are hard and that performance is uncorrelated somehow.

hotnfresh 3y ago
> Sure, you can pretend developers don't read and write code. Weird. Why would someone pretend that?

varjag 3y ago

Communication, empathy and navigating people is easy: there's a deluge of people capable of doing that. Writing code is hard. Not many people can code at all; even fewer are any good at it. This is why you can easily be unemployed after BA in Communications but have little problem getting a job after high school if you can code.

remich 3y ago
In my experience, it's relatively rare among software engineers. So, even if it's over-represented in the general population (which I'm skeptical of), having actual skill at that makes you leaps and bounds more effective than others, once you get up to senior+ level.
- varjag 3y ago
  I agree good people skills along with technical skills is a huge bonus. But it's still a less common combination among overall candidate pool than good people skills and lacking technical skills.

remich 3y ago

In fairness, the ratio of "just write code" to everything you listed above changes quite drastically as your seniority increases. To be sure, there will always be some senior/staff/principal engineers who sit in a room by themselves and code all day without talking to anyone, but, typically, the more senior you get in an organization the more your job consists of things other than writing code. When you're a junior or a mid, however, writing code makes up the vast majority of your day.

hotnfresh 3y ago
I was thinking about “just writing code” with the communication and empathy parts, especially, in fact, though you’re right that they also apply (differently, though I’m not sure if it’s more) to more-senior work.