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I think this is a decent article, with some distilled wisdom... Though I also think it has some repeating status-quo mumbo-jumbo. Every time somebody says a so

I think this is a decent article, with some distilled wisdom... Though I also think it has some repeating status-quo mumbo-jumbo. Every time somebody says a soft-science claim and presents it as a fact, I try to vet it with this heuristic: It can't just sound good, or satisfying, but is it actually true? Imagine whether a case can be made for the exact opposite statement, or whether there may be circumstances that the statement is obviously false. For example, once a principal engineer asserted rather confidently, "At my level, the most important work you can do is usually in Jira." That's a claim that's hard to assess with any objectivity, but I can certainly imagine a different principal engineer feeling the exact opposite, and I can certainly think of many companies where they wouldn't hire/want a principal engineer primarily for Jira work. Back to this article, any time somebody says "A manager is X" or a "staff is X" I think to myself... well can I think of a company that would want managers who focus almost entirely on not X? The answer is almost always yes.

jahsome 2y ago
As someone whose been sort of "up and down" the role ladder, and is very intentionally closer to the bottom than the top for right now, I think I am disproportionately perceiving the wisdom in that jira comment. I don't think it's the _only_ important thing, but I think I do agree with the sentiment that it may be the most important. Personally I'm all about diversity of perspectives when it comes to building a team. I would be thrilled to have both a principal who loves jira, and one who doesn't. Someone who tries to straddle both just strikes me as neutered. When it comes to roles, I always end up back to the Ron Swanson quote "never half ass two things; whole ass one thing." I do agree with you though, one-size fits all definitions are almost all laughably based on "vibes." Then again, isn't management pretty much just vibe cultivation?
- zug_zug 2y ago
  I think it only takes a few moments of skepticism to show that "Is X the most important thing about being a Y?" doesn't mean anything. Being good at something obviously comes down to multiple different skills (manager may require social skills, writing skills, perception, business acumen, intuition, etc). So to try to ask which of those skills is "most" important is a poorly-defined problem, because there isn't such a thing as an 1-unit of of writing skill to weigh against 1-unit of intuition skill. For whatever reason, a lot of people are drawn to these types of oversimplifications that are so drastic they become meaningless.
  - jahsome 2y ago
    The hypothetical question as I understand it isn't about which skills, but rather which activity yields the greatest expected value.
austin-cheney 2y ago
I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t. A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in research, design, construction, manufacturing, superintending, managing, and in the education of the engineer. His/her work is predominantly intellectual and varied and not of a routine mental or physical character. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer Never does that occur in software. Most people employed to write software struggle to use giant tools to put text on screen and cannot measure things. That isn’t engineering. By the time a developer does graduate to a level commensurate with engineering we call them senior principles to distinguish them from the false engineers.
- fffrantz 2y ago
  Also, and it's striking to me that there never was a crackdown on this, but in a lot of countries, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you have an engineering degree from a vetted higher-ed institution and are part of your provincial/state engineers' association. For example, in N.S., your job title cannot contain the word engineer unless you're registered as an engineer with Engineers Nova Scotia, the provincial regulatory body. And to get the EIT status (engineer in training, the provisional period before becoming a professional engineer), you must hold a CEAB-accredited undergraduate degree. So, software engineers rarely exist and it's mostly software developers in N.S.
  - ahtihn 2y ago
    Why do you want the government to regulate what people are allowed to call themselves when there's no public benefit? What harm is being caused by software developers calling themselves software engineers? It's seems like authoritarian power-tripping to want to regulate this.
    - jmillikin 2y ago

jahsome 2y ago

As someone whose been sort of "up and down" the role ladder, and is very intentionally closer to the bottom than the top for right now, I think I am disproportionately perceiving the wisdom in that jira comment. I don't think it's the _only_ important thing, but I think I do agree with the sentiment that it may be the most important. Personally I'm all about diversity of perspectives when it comes to building a team. I would be thrilled to have both a principal who loves jira, and one who doesn't. Someone who tries to straddle both just strikes me as neutered. When it comes to roles, I always end up back to the Ron Swanson quote "never half ass two things; whole ass one thing." I do agree with you though, one-size fits all definitions are almost all laughably based on "vibes." Then again, isn't management pretty much just vibe cultivation?

zug_zug 2y ago
I think it only takes a few moments of skepticism to show that "Is X the most important thing about being a Y?" doesn't mean anything. Being good at something obviously comes down to multiple different skills (manager may require social skills, writing skills, perception, business acumen, intuition, etc). So to try to ask which of those skills is "most" important is a poorly-defined problem, because there isn't such a thing as an 1-unit of of writing skill to weigh against 1-unit of intuition skill. For whatever reason, a lot of people are drawn to these types of oversimplifications that are so drastic they become meaningless.
- jahsome 2y ago
  The hypothetical question as I understand it isn't about which skills, but rather which activity yields the greatest expected value.

austin-cheney 2y ago

I really wish people would stop calling software developers engineers because they aren’t. A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in research, design, construction, manufacturing, superintending, managing, and in the education of the engineer. His/her work is predominantly intellectual and varied and not of a routine mental or physical character. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer Never does that occur in software. Most people employed to write software struggle to use giant tools to put text on screen and cannot measure things. That isn’t engineering. By the time a developer does graduate to a level commensurate with engineering we call them senior principles to distinguish them from the false engineers.

fffrantz 2y ago
Also, and it's striking to me that there never was a crackdown on this, but in a lot of countries, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you have an engineering degree from a vetted higher-ed institution and are part of your provincial/state engineers' association. For example, in N.S., your job title cannot contain the word engineer unless you're registered as an engineer with Engineers Nova Scotia, the provincial regulatory body. And to get the EIT status (engineer in training, the provisional period before becoming a professional engineer), you must hold a CEAB-accredited undergraduate degree. So, software engineers rarely exist and it's mostly software developers in N.S.
- ahtihn 2y ago
  Why do you want the government to regulate what people are allowed to call themselves when there's no public benefit? What harm is being caused by software developers calling themselves software engineers? It's seems like authoritarian power-tripping to want to regulate this.
  - jmillikin 2y ago