Re:Ask HN: What does mastery look like in software engineering?
by robertlagrant on Thursday January 07, 2021 @06:36AM
(#25669887)
If you have a load of smart engineers, sometimes it can be a more successful strategy to just build something than to pay EY £250k to do market analysis, get a load of execs bought in who then will "make it work" even if it shouldn't, or kill it off even if they shouldn't, and then finally get a committee-written spec handed over to be built in a rush.
Re:Ask HN: What does mastery look like in software engineering?
by disgruntledphd2 on Thursday January 07, 2021 @09:55AM
(#25671732)
Sure, there are pathologies at both ends of the spectrum. I do think it's worthwhile (particularly here), that software engineers/technical people are subject to their own set of development pathologies.
Re:Ask HN: What does mastery look like in software engineering?
by robertlagrant on Friday January 08, 2021 @08:24AM
(#25684444)
That's fair, yes.
For instance, in my experience at a FAANG, the issue was often that a new technical solution was proposed, architected and built before any business/market people got involved with the result that loads of amazing, brilliantly architected and completely useless projects got built.
(My favourite time was when a (really smart, to be fair) software engineer rediscovered the normal distribution while looking for a way to reduce storage requirements for an analytics product).