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I'm failing to follow the logic here. The initial point is that "The potential impact of the lone software engineer is soaring". However, the author then takes

I'm failing to follow the logic here. The initial point is that "The potential impact of the lone software engineer is soaring". However, the author then takes that to mean that engineers will be less valuable in the future? This analogy seems apt to me, and I think it makes the logical leap more obvious: Fifty years ago, if you wanted to design a new model of car, you had to get plywood and clay, and work hundreds of hours of to get even the most basic model completed. Now, you can open up a CAD program and begin making real decisions immediately. What previously took a large team to build, a single designer can now do. (The analogous logical leap to what the OP seems to be saying is) Soon, we won't need designers at all! A company will come out with a new car model simply by snapping design-legos together. In reality, removing inefficiency made designers more valuable. If you were the best car designer 50 years ago, you had to spend a significant amount of time molding clay. Today, you spend almost all of your time creatively finding solutions to problems. I see the value of individual engineers increasing significantly as we remove cruft in the creation process.

akavi 12y ago
Replace "software engineer" with "person building a product" in that first quote. The value of engineering skills as they are defined today is falling, but the value of a single person with an idea and the drive to implement it is soaring.
- eldavido 12y ago
  I think the change is purely additive. Great engineering is no less valuable than it once was, but pure "idea guys" can do stuff now that they couldn't do before.
  - GFischer 12y ago
    If they do stuff, by definition then they aren't "idea guys" :) You might mean "nontechnical people can do a functioning MVP" which they couldn't before :)
- monochr 12y ago
  Back when I was a physicists every two bit crank used to go on about how ideas were more important than knowledge. Now I'm hearing the same in programming. And it's just as wrong here. Picking the right algorithm and stack means the difference between a website that can handle 2,000 people and one that can handle 2,000,000. How many websites start off with a bad idea, get popular and then need to hire hundreds of engineers to put ban aid after band aid on a fundamentally terrible idea? Facebook and google have both had to spend millions of man hours to fix the fact they were optimized for millions of users and billions of web pages and now have to deal with x1000 times those. And the only reason why they were that prepared in the first place was because extraordinary people wrote them. The average developer who bangs out a half thought out colour by numbers website would be lucky to have it not crash before it reaches a thousand users a day.
  - xsmasher 12y ago
    On the flip-side, the scalability doesn't matter if no one comes. The efficiency of the implementation doesn't matter if the wrong idea is implemented. Sometimes skimping on the engineering is better than skimping on the idea. That's what MVP and quick-to-market are about, correcting the idea so you can architect a solution to the RIGHT problem.
toomuchtodo 12y ago
> A company will come out with a new car model simply by snapping design-legos together. They'll use a combination of A/B testing and genetic algorithms to reach an equilibrium between what customers want and what physics will allow.
adamtj 12y ago
I think the core of the argument is that most software problems are becoming easier, which means the talents of the very best just aren't applicable or especially useful. If something is easy enough, anybody can do it, and do it nearly as well and as fast as the best. For example, nobody can flip burgers 10x faster than average. Maybe 2x, but not 10x. If something is difficult, then many people won't be able to do it at all. Most of the rest may only be able to do it very slowly and with great difficulty. The very best will make it look easy, even though it's not. When something becomes 10 times easier, that doesn't mean the best become 10 times better or faster at it. They may become a little faster, but the real gains are at the low end: The average and worst performers become significantly better. Further, many people who just can't do the thing become able to accomplish it.

akavi 12y ago

Replace "software engineer" with "person building a product" in that first quote. The value of engineering skills as they are defined today is falling, but the value of a single person with an idea and the drive to implement it is soaring.

eldavido 12y ago
I think the change is purely additive. Great engineering is no less valuable than it once was, but pure "idea guys" can do stuff now that they couldn't do before.
- GFischer 12y ago
  If they do stuff, by definition then they aren't "idea guys" :) You might mean "nontechnical people can do a functioning MVP" which they couldn't before :)
monochr 12y ago
Back when I was a physicists every two bit crank used to go on about how ideas were more important than knowledge. Now I'm hearing the same in programming. And it's just as wrong here. Picking the right algorithm and stack means the difference between a website that can handle 2,000 people and one that can handle 2,000,000. How many websites start off with a bad idea, get popular and then need to hire hundreds of engineers to put ban aid after band aid on a fundamentally terrible idea? Facebook and google have both had to spend millions of man hours to fix the fact they were optimized for millions of users and billions of web pages and now have to deal with x1000 times those. And the only reason why they were that prepared in the first place was because extraordinary people wrote them. The average developer who bangs out a half thought out colour by numbers website would be lucky to have it not crash before it reaches a thousand users a day.
- xsmasher 12y ago
  On the flip-side, the scalability doesn't matter if no one comes. The efficiency of the implementation doesn't matter if the wrong idea is implemented. Sometimes skimping on the engineering is better than skimping on the idea. That's what MVP and quick-to-market are about, correcting the idea so you can architect a solution to the RIGHT problem.

toomuchtodo 12y ago

> A company will come out with a new car model simply by snapping design-legos together. They'll use a combination of A/B testing and genetic algorithms to reach an equilibrium between what customers want and what physics will allow.

adamtj 12y ago

I think the core of the argument is that most software problems are becoming easier, which means the talents of the very best just aren't applicable or especially useful. If something is easy enough, anybody can do it, and do it nearly as well and as fast as the best. For example, nobody can flip burgers 10x faster than average. Maybe 2x, but not 10x. If something is difficult, then many people won't be able to do it at all. Most of the rest may only be able to do it very slowly and with great difficulty. The very best will make it look easy, even though it's not. When something becomes 10 times easier, that doesn't mean the best become 10 times better or faster at it. They may become a little faster, but the real gains are at the low end: The average and worst performers become significantly better. Further, many people who just can't do the thing become able to accomplish it.