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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 throwawaymath on Thursday January 03, 2019 @08:16AM (#18814793)
I think whether or not you're a capable generalist is independent of whether or not you have a PL PhD. Jeff Dean is a generalist because he invested significant time in working across a wide variety of problems, not because of his PhD. If anything, a PhD makes you a specialist by default. You need to do extra work to gain diverse experience across the stack.

This is to say that I don't think you should use Jeff Dean as an argument for hiring PL specialists in generalist roles.

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Re:Ask HN: How old were the most talented software engineers... by seanmcdirmid on Thursday January 03, 2019 @11:19AM (#18816213)
Google does this though. Whenever is PL PhDs get together, someone invariably talks about how they are doing ads for google these days. It’s actually so common that it has become a meme.
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