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A comment on Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers you've met?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers... by Steve44 on Thursday January 03, 2019 @03:08AM (#18813604)
When I stopped programming I moved more into technical testing and that morphed into 'project guru' on some quite large projects. I could understand from low level network protocols up to the big fluffy clouds, I could also pick things up very quickly as I understood all the building blocks if not the latest buzz words. From my first exposure to SQL I was optimising databases better than the incumbent dba within a couple of months, and that wasn't even my job.

I loved the work, but the downside was no one ever advertised for that role despite it was very important to the project.

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Re:Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers... by geezerjay on Thursday January 03, 2019 @04:23AM (#18813861)
> From my first exposure to SQL I was optimising databases better than the incumbent dba within a couple of months, and that wasn't even my job.

That doesn't mean much, as in the not so distant past (and in some small shops even today) the resident database expert is far from experienced or even technically apt. In fact, it was and still is a job that was assigned internally to someone who happened to have anything to do with the project, who was thus forced to accumulate yet another responsibility.

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