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I don’t like this definition of “good engineer” because it seems degenerate with “good businessman” or “good product designer.” He was a bad engineer: early im

I don’t like this definition of “good engineer” because it seems degenerate with “good businessman” or “good product designer.” He was a bad engineer: early implementations of Facebook were buggy, insecure, and not featureful. I agree that engineering is not valued in-and-of itself generally (it is just a tool), but instead of turning it into something inherently valued by changing the definition of it, we should just admit that it isn’t valued in-and-of itself. I mean, in all fields (other than some art, maybe) the end result is valued more by outsiders than the process to get there…

shadowgovt 1y ago
He successfully pushed a product out that worked well enough to get traction and get popular. Part of good engineering is knowing what problems to solve. Facebook early version was buggy and insecure and lacked features. And none of that mattered to the target audience enough to not use it; its value outweighed the pain points. A junior engineer can solve today's problems; a senior engineer can build against tomorrow's, and a staff engineer knows what problems should be solved and what shouldn't because time is a finite resource. The further you go up the ladder, the fewer problems can be solved by throwing the right algorithm at it with your programming tool of choice. A dreamer and a hobbyist can put together a well-crafted site with five users. An engineer keeps working at solving the problems between there and five million, including solving them by building the systems to solve them and finding the people to work in those systems.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Under this definition the best engineers seem to be sales guys.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    At the places I've worked, sales guys get some say in prioritization of features, but rarely in prioritization of their implementation. I would say the distinction is good sales guys can turn market sentiment into a feature request, good engineers can turn one or more feature requests into behaviors in the system. But the actual truth is that a sales team with some idea of how software is written coupled to lead engineers with some idea of market sentiment and taste is more powerful than either discipline heavily siloed.

shadowgovt 1y ago

He successfully pushed a product out that worked well enough to get traction and get popular. Part of good engineering is knowing what problems to solve. Facebook early version was buggy and insecure and lacked features. And none of that mattered to the target audience enough to not use it; its value outweighed the pain points. A junior engineer can solve today's problems; a senior engineer can build against tomorrow's, and a staff engineer knows what problems should be solved and what shouldn't because time is a finite resource. The further you go up the ladder, the fewer problems can be solved by throwing the right algorithm at it with your programming tool of choice. A dreamer and a hobbyist can put together a well-crafted site with five users. An engineer keeps working at solving the problems between there and five million, including solving them by building the systems to solve them and finding the people to work in those systems.

bee_rider 1y ago
Under this definition the best engineers seem to be sales guys.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  At the places I've worked, sales guys get some say in prioritization of features, but rarely in prioritization of their implementation. I would say the distinction is good sales guys can turn market sentiment into a feature request, good engineers can turn one or more feature requests into behaviors in the system. But the actual truth is that a sales team with some idea of how software is written coupled to lead engineers with some idea of market sentiment and taste is more powerful than either discipline heavily siloed.