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Yup, I was coming up under a senior at my work one day and he tried to very incorrectly hand wave how a browser uses a GPU to accelerate draw calls. I had done

Yup, I was coming up under a senior at my work one day and he tried to very incorrectly hand wave how a browser uses a GPU to accelerate draw calls. I had done work in the C/C++ code modifying Chromium directly and went, “that’s not how the browser talks to the OS to use the GPU for acceleration”. They immediately tried to argue I was wrong and made some more nonsense up. This person is a very competent coder, but we got into further discussions and it was made very clear they had lived in a JavaScript landscape for either far too long, or had only barely gone over basic computing concepts. Their understanding of computers largely ended at “and then v8 does some stuff”. It was weird cause this person had an honours level computer science degree from a very prestigious university and they were not from some rich family that could have paid their way through schooling. They also had over a decade of experience shipping numerous projects. It really threw me for a loop as to what a software engineer needs to know to succeed at very high levels professionally.

yieldcrv 3y ago
> I was coming up under a senior at my work one day > It really threw me for a loop as to what a software engineer needs to know to succeed at very high levels professionally he is arguably more successful while you have prematurely optimized do things that make money, since that’s clearly the priority and context here
- eropple 3y ago
  > he is arguably more successful while you have prematurely optimized Sure--until he isn't. And that happens north of "senior". I've had a lot of I-shaped people reporting to and taking direction from me in my career, and I'm not as deep at any one thing as many of them. But I'm deeper at a lot of things than most of those folks, and I can synthesize solutions to more complex problems because of them. Heck, things I learned writing games in my teens still come up on occasion twenty years later.
- ghosty141 3y ago
  Senior seems to be lacking knowledge that OP has and acts like it. No matter his backstory he shouldve acknowledged his defieceny. Since OP seems to be newer in the industry comparing success isnt really fair, he might make it out on top in the future, we dont know.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> and they were not from some rich family that could have paid their way through schooling Huh? If they'd got private tutoring, that wouldn't make them understand things any less?
- harry8 3y ago
  The suggestion is that they got there on merit, intelligence, hard work. Not family influence, money, low key corruption in support of the academic career of an idiot.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    It just seems like a very low resolution view of the world. Getting through on family influence is vanishingly rare, to my understanding.
    - harry8 3y ago
      George W. Bush. Hilary Clinton. Legacy admissions exist. There are of course a million other ways people fail upwards.

yieldcrv 3y ago

> I was coming up under a senior at my work one day > It really threw me for a loop as to what a software engineer needs to know to succeed at very high levels professionally he is arguably more successful while you have prematurely optimized do things that make money, since that’s clearly the priority and context here

eropple 3y ago
> he is arguably more successful while you have prematurely optimized Sure--until he isn't. And that happens north of "senior". I've had a lot of I-shaped people reporting to and taking direction from me in my career, and I'm not as deep at any one thing as many of them. But I'm deeper at a lot of things than most of those folks, and I can synthesize solutions to more complex problems because of them. Heck, things I learned writing games in my teens still come up on occasion twenty years later.
ghosty141 3y ago
Senior seems to be lacking knowledge that OP has and acts like it. No matter his backstory he shouldve acknowledged his defieceny. Since OP seems to be newer in the industry comparing success isnt really fair, he might make it out on top in the future, we dont know.

robertlagrant 3y ago

> and they were not from some rich family that could have paid their way through schooling Huh? If they'd got private tutoring, that wouldn't make them understand things any less?

harry8 3y ago
The suggestion is that they got there on merit, intelligence, hard work. Not family influence, money, low key corruption in support of the academic career of an idiot.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  It just seems like a very low resolution view of the world. Getting through on family influence is vanishingly rare, to my understanding.
  - harry8 3y ago
    George W. Bush. Hilary Clinton. Legacy admissions exist. There are of course a million other ways people fail upwards.