Facebook Exec Explains Why Technical Skills Aren't Enough To Be a Great Engineer (geekwire.com) 188
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook's Regina Wallace-Jones, who is in charge of protecting 1.6 billion people on the social network, says math and science skills aren't enough to tackle challenges at a firm. "Don't let anyone tell you that engineering is only about math and science or that engineering expertise is all you have to offer the world. Your experiences and your perspectives can help inspire a company to find a different approach to a problem or encourage someone else to speak up," she said. "The impact of engineers goes well beyond the mobile apps, the gadgets, and the security systems that we build. The quest to engineer meaningful solutions... is not just about math and science, it's about making amazing solutions for real people in the real world. It's about pushing mankind to its outer limits by inspiring the world to imagine bigger solutions than our hands can hold."
It is all a rat race (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It is all a rat race (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the crap about "pushing mankind to its outer limits" is hard to read. Is that really what engineering does?
Obviously, understanding the humans and the use cases is more important to being a great engineer than just math; the math is just a base requirement, not the job of engineering.
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Engineers find solutions to problems.
Marketing tells consumers that they just didn't know they needed it(insert new thinner/faster product here).
This... (Score:5, Insightful)
This... coming from Facebook... is just about the funniest thing I've seen in several days.
"meaningful"
Ah ha.
Ha ha ha ha. :)
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This thread proves them right. Real engineers like us (I include myself) would never have built Facebook. We would have balked at the privacy issues, thought the whole thing was trivial and stupid. We would have avoided the buzzword bullshit that somehow has grown it into a network with a billion users.
Like it or not, a lot of prior like Facebook and the fact that we can't see the attraction is why we aren't billionaires or front end developers at their company.
Re: This... (Score:5, Insightful)
Billionaire != meaningful.
Re: This... (Score:4, Insightful)
Billionaire != meaningful.
Strongly disagree. If you are a billionaire you will have more influence over the lives of others than someone who is not. How is that not meaningful? It doesn't make the meaning positive.
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No. If you are a billionaire or millionaire, you may be able to exert such influence. Doesn't mean you will. Even some that choose to try, fail.
"Meaningful" is one of those words that can carry import of a particular type to one person, and quite another to the next.
I would speculate that "consequential" might be more what you're thinking of. Consequences are the inevitable result of actions. Meaning... not.
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Well, not quite.
Engineers focus on the details of how. This requires a certain outlook that eschews emotional appeal. Reality doesn't care about what we want to work. In contrast, most people are so wrapped up in wanting what they want to have a shot at implementing it. Big dreamers can catalyze, but they often have trouble with details, especially technical ones. Rare is the person who can do both, but even then there are limits. Zuckerberg started the site, but he couldn't grow it to where it is now al
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Engineers focus on the details of how. This requires a certain outlook that eschews emotional appeal.
No, it really is the exact opposite. To be a successful engineer you need to know not only the technical stuff, but to understand how people will use and even feel about your products. It's always been that way, it's not really new. Engine designers have been considering the tone of the exhaust system since at least the 50s, probably before.
Often it's the engineers job to understand not only when a requested feature is technically impossible, but when users will react badly to it.
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This is why engineers need to build some offworld colonies so we can start a new society where reason is more valued than narcissism and we don't have to deal with emotional idiots electing sociopathic politicians.
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People like us would never have built Facebook, because Facebook is a silly idea. Sure, it's a silly idea that makes money but it's still a silly idea. Getting rich is not the same as providing something of benefit to the human race, no matter how much the rich execs try to tell engineers that making money is the only goal out there.
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Well, I just want to stand up and say, "I've worked on silly projects too."
Am I the only one who made money on checking for "Y2K" bugs?
I'd make a silly website right now if somebody wanted to pay the right amount for it.
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Peter Gibbons, is that you?
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Derpy derp, derp derp derp?
I presume that is some guy you like to bully, try it my face bullyboy.
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From an engineering perspective, the main problem that facebook solves is "keeping in touch with people you knew when you were in school."
When they launched, myspace was already solving that problem.
And the technical side of it is trivial; it is just a website with basic features. Nothing to solve, only stuff to implement.
The privacy issues are irrelevant. That is a concern for the user, not the builder.
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Yeah, the crap about "pushing mankind to its outer limits" is hard to read. Is that really what engineering does?
I don't know about engineers, but raising teenagers will sure do that.
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Those are well established, middle limits.
People whose child-rearing pushed them outside humanity's limits... usually all died.
You end up totally insane, but that is the expected outcome.
HP's example (Score:3)
Re:It is all a rat race (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the crap about "pushing mankind to its outer limits" is hard to read. Is that really what engineering does?
Well a little. But I don near shit myself when includedn in the quote was "The impact of engineers goes well beyond the mobile apps, the gadgets,
Because yeh - once upon a time we went to the moon, using simple computers and slide rules. That's pressing the limits.
Now pressing the limits is writing apps. http://img.memecdn.com/Cutting... [memecdn.com]
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Going to the moon didn't press any limits. Sending humans to orbit did. But the moon part was a fancy vicarious vacation for the masses, a feat of pure engineering.
The Wright Brothers pressed more limits with their flights than we did going to moon. Going to the moon was done carefully, with a lot of money, and a boatload of engineers calculating all the limits before taking actions to prevent going beyond any of them.
I'd say Gandhi pressed the limits more than the moon shot. They stood up and tested the li
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Going to the moon didn't press any limits.
I'm not certain I understand. It sounds like you are saying making Candy Crush Saga is the equivalent of going to the moon.
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Right, that is because you took part of what I said, added on something totally absurd that is in the opposite direction than my comments were going, and found that the thing I said, plus the thing I didn't say that you added, don't make any sense together.
That should have told you not to add in crap about what I assume is a mobile game.
If you haven't yet comprehended my point, it might be premature to try to expand it. ;)
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Right, that is because you took part of what I said, added on something totally absurd that is in the opposite direction than my comments were going, and found that the thing I said, plus the thing I didn't say that you added, don't make any sense together.
That should have told you not to add in crap about what I assume is a mobile game.
If you haven't yet comprehended my point, it might be premature to try to expand it. ;)
I comprehend much. I also comprehend what the Facebook woman said. I fully comprehend what you wrote.
What I really really disagree with you on is your completely wrong idea that going to the moon did not press any limits. A response like you made deserves at the very least an incredulous response, sarcasm is just as good though.
To be brutally honest, your idea that going to the moon wasn't pressing the limits isn't only not even wrong, it is clueless. I am firmly convinced that you are completely cluel
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See, you go way off the rails. You imply you didn't understand, because instead of just saying you disagree, you say it is "clueless."
That is an explicit statement of not comprehending the reasons for what you're disagreeing with.
It may be that there is a fundamentally subjective question here; having a different opinion is good. Everybody can have an opinion. But claiming other opinions are "wrong" or "clueless" is pretty much the only way for you to be factually wrong in a subjective judgment. ;)
All that
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>Going to the moon didn't press any limits.
Very easy to say in retrospect, 40+ years later when SW does't run from ropes of magnetic cores and there's more compute power in a cheap watch then in the entire Apollo stack.
If poster could look up from his apps for a second, maybe go down to Kennedy Space center, and see just what they did at the time - and in truth are still doing, it might possibly impress him enough that he wouldn't think that Candy Crush is the epitome of humankind. That apps somehow are moving humanity toward a bright new future.
If that sounds sarcastic - yup - it was meant to. That the F1 rocket engine was designed and built when it was, using the incredibly primitive design tools of the day, ranks a
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Just assume I know what the space race was. I wasn't born yesterday, unlike you. (check your user id kiddo)
You can't imagine that people's opinions are their opinions. You have to imagine that if I only knew what you knew, I'd just change my mind. Well, maybe that oversteps what you can know, eh?
Instead of talking about apps, which is all you, you could simply continue parsing my comments until they make sense. If it sounds like something that makes no sense, you simply did not yet apply the literal word me
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It's not always marketings fault. For example I know plenty of brilliant "engineers" who don't understand why global memory is a bad thing. He's great at solving problems but the code is atrocious. I know other great coders who can't think outside of the box and be creative, but if you tell them exactly what to work on they produce good results.
Great engineers have a good balance of creativity, discipline, skill, intelligence and drive. Usually I identify them by their willingness to learn new things.
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That's a facilitator failure though.
It's easy to run workshops where introverts get to contribute too - and brainstorming sessions are included in that.
A good manager will also use a range of mechanisms to get input from across the team, and understand which approaches work best with each team member.
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It seems highly more probable that they're interested in receiving money from people who have more of it, not people with less. The poor already glue themselves to facebook and provide advertising revenue... and that is all they can provide.
The rich don't have nearly the same facebook uptake. They're more likely to hire somebody to do it for them then actually submit themselves to it directly. Maybe that is what the droid meant; pushing beyond the current limits of consumer demographics!
Re: It is all a rat race (Score:3)
Re:It is all a rat race (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing is ever enough for these corporations while there are still dollars in circulation that don't belong to them. Facebook is about making amazing solutions to fill Mark Zuckerberg's pocket, nothing more, nothing less. "Real people in the real world" my bollox
And yet... how many of us have actually made a product 1+ billion "real people in the real world" use and how many are just being Internet warriors in the comments field? I've seen a lot of engineers get lost in technical or academic challenges, philosophical issues or just perceived wants and needs the customers/users would have that they really don't. Cue the infamous "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." when Apple released the iPod. Or why "assume a spherical cow" has become a running joke of theoretical models.
There is a lot of hubris that it's what the STEM people do that's important and everything else is fluff. If nobody else will stick their neck out, I will: I don't really understand people, like what the mainstream wants or why. And that's okay, because the people who do generally haven't don't know much about actually building it. And sometimes the economists will tell you that yes, people want it and yes, we could build it but you'd be spending $100 for a solution to a $10 problem. And sometimes you build it and it's the best solution nobody's heard about.
real world <-- investigate, analyze --> problems
problems <-- design, build, test --> solutions
solutions <-- communicate, distribute --> real world
I've written a lot of good code that went to naught not because there was anything wrong with it, but because it wasn't actually solving real world problems. And you can of course blame the spec or that the user is holding it wrong, but at the end of the day it just isn't providing value. So I try to go beyond what they teach in STEM classes and work on what's the user really trying to achieve and can I deliver on that. Or maybe it's just in-house what the business analyst wants or the way the architect or development team wants to build things but there's hardly any position where you don't need those skills.
I have this person at work in mind, no doubt he's very bright but he's also quite terrible at talking to people in a way they can understand. Even for an IT person it becomes an incoherent rant of technical details, niche concepts and proscribing solutions instead of explaining them. Meanwhile I pushed through a good technical change recently asking "What if the person changes his mind?" because the proposed solution failed to take that into account. That I pointed out how we'd already solved this other places helped, of course. But if nobody pays attention, we're going to reinvent the wheel and poorly, over and over again.
Artists (Score:3)
Engineering *is* all about math and science. Software developers are not engineers. Devs are artists with strong sub-calculus math skills with a knack for flawlessly drawing within the lines while imagining a result far beyond them. We're artists first.
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Engineering *is* all about math and science.
There's as much of intuition and artistry about good engineering. The maths and science will tell you that what you've build won't fall down, but it won't tell you how to design it in the first place.
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Engineering *is* all about math and science. Software developers are not engineers.
True, engineering is about math and science, while programming is only about math (albeit a special kind of it).
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1) Never trust an executive to tell what makes a great engineer. 2) Never let anyone at Facebook tell you what makes a great engineer.
H1b and the will to work 80 hours a week (Score:5, Insightful)
H1b and the will to work 80 hours a week is what they really want.
"protecting" 1.6 billion people? (Score:1)
"protecting" 1.6 billion people? from what exactly?
remember when this was "news for nerds"? reads more like "news for social studies majors". and it isn't even SJW friday.
c'mon slashdot!
Re: "protecting" 1.6 billion people? (Score:1, Insightful)
and it isn't even SJW friday.
The anti-SJW crowd sure is a more whining attention seaking bunch, at every opportunity relevant or not, than the SJWs they are so angry at.
Translation (Score:1)
Translation: My company is built on unicorn dust and bullshit, so your technical skills are worth squat to me; Call a stylist.
Facebook (Score:1)
What on earth does Facebook "engineer"? Web pages?
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Hence, the giant robot army. And, of course, building a giant robot army that is capable of feeding and caring for hamsters is a particularly brutal technical challenge, which is why Facebook has such a hard time finding qualified engineers.
Or maybe it's just because the commute to Menlo Park is unholy from pretty much everywhere. Either way.
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Have you ever used ReactJS? That's being developed by Facebook in the majority.
Then there's a lot of graph theory being applied to your network connections to determine who are you likely to know. A lot of analysis of your browsing habits on FB (and off it, admittedly) to determine what ads you are likely to click on and what pages/communities you may be interested in.
Like it or not, Facebook is doing a LOT of research to keep itself relevant, both in engineering and in the minds of people.
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I don't even use Facebook but it's easy to admire their engineering.
To be fair, it's about all I do admire.
But scaling a website to a billion users a day, 8 billion video views a day, however hundreds of billions of ads served per day - and bear in mind they calculate which ad to serve to each user.
That's some pretty solid engineering.
Really people? (Score:1)
... it's about making amazing solutions for real people in the real world."
Define "Amazing solutions"? It sure as hell isn't anything Facebook has to offer.
It's about pushing mankind to its outer limits by inspiring the world to imagine bigger solutions than our hands can hold.
Nonsense that can be interpreted subjectively. By using that "benchmark", I could use it to turn away anyone I want. Sorry old guy (40 something) but you didn't " imagine bigger solutions than our hands can hold". Same for you miss, your solution isn't "big enough".
The capricious reasons that employers come up with to screen people out is just getting out of hand. I guess they have to do that in order to not be considered li
Not just math and science, sure (Score:1)
Meaningful solutions? (Score:2)
Wake me up when Facebook does something meaningful rather than yet more social media tat and BS using code that could have been written by an undergraduate.
Insightful (Score:5, Funny)
And that's why she earns the big bucks. Because she's the one with this insightful knowledge which no one ever though about before.
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
No, she earns the big bucks because she can make her bosses think it's insightful.
The corporate world is the Art of Bullshitting. In other words, she's a Bullshit Engineer (at least for this article).
Okay, it's an old one but here it is (Score:2)
Every engineer has five senses:
sight
hearing
touch
smell
taste
Every great engineer has two additional senses
horse
common
Re: elaborate further ... (Score:2)
Just start looking, horse common should be just as easy to find as horse rare, at least in France.
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I terrified the folks at my nursery school by taking apart and putting back together rotary-dial phones. Sometimes, I even fixed them. I
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I doubt it has a formal answer. Commonsense is that which everyone should know. Horse sense is that which certain people, probably in a specific area, would have (or should have) learned through experience.
That's just my interpretation. It's not authoritative but it is so because I said it is so! ;-) (After all, it's commonsense.)
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I went and found this:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/mean... [phrases.org.uk]
I am, by no means, an authority on the subject. I didn't even read all of the page. It just seems to be the better of the few - others listed it and had some usage. That one gets into where it comes from - or where they claim it comes from. Buggered if I know, buggered if I am an authority.
It's up to you, I suppose, as to what you believe. Horses do things like take you home when you're drunk. I figured it came from there and things like that - things l
News flash (Score:2)
Being good at math doesn't help you build UIs at Facebook. But there's more to engineering than building UIs.
Math guys need UI guys and UI guys need math guys. What we don't need is more false nonsense about how one is "better" or more necessary than the other.
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The mistake here is assuming that those 100 "UI guys" are equally or even minimally competent. Good designers are just as difficult to find, and it's much harder to separate the wheat from the chaff. When it comes to developers, those with a strong aesthetic sense tend to produce more legible and maintainable code than those with a stronger technical background. Finding people with a mix of both is difficult, but ideal.
Privileging one set of skills and trivializing another is foolish. It's a lesson many
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You aren't going to the moon. No one goes there. There's no reason for them to go there.
Bullshit (Score:1)
For it to work like that, the suits would have to listen to the engineers. In reality there is always a sweet spot for getting into a new technology: Shortly after mass-market availability: After the early kinks have been eliminated, before the quality has been lowered to the minimum that creates the most profit. It's so fitting that a Facebook exec would spout that bullshit: Engineers gave us the Internet. The suits are turning it into Facebook.
What the hell ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Signed,
an engineer
Re:What the hell ... (Score:4, Interesting)
> ... would Facebook know about "real solutions for real people"?
In fact, more than virtually any other company in the world, excepting perhaps Microsoft.
> What exactly do they produce? What particular problems do they address? How is mankind's lot significantly improved by the presence of Facebook?
They produce a social network. There are many problems that these address. Sure, from your point of view, people post cat baby photos. Around the world Facebook is virtually the Internet, because it provides the means to connect with a social graph of people in similar circumstances. The breadth of communities, NGOs and government agencies worldwide that use Facebook groups to communicate with small communities, where there exists no infrastructure to build and publicise traditional web sites, is beyond large. Today I fly out to the rural mountains of Taiwan where I will be working with the Taiwanese indiginous people to document their own language. They face a great many difficulties but the various tribes have been able to pull together to share information, organise events, publicise their political struggles, all via Facebook and mobile networks (another great engineering achievement, which presumably you actually rate?)
Signed,
Also an engineer (one who develops solutions for people outside of the rich white-anglosphere).
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Facebook is a microscopically thin veneer sitting atop the infrastructure that we call the internet. There is nothing that they provide that cannot be accomplished in any number of other ways and with other tools. In fact, many people communicate, network, exchange information and ideas, document their history and enterprises, and carry on social networking very well without Facebook at all. Remember email? Works brilliantly. That'
Re:What the hell ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see what I've accomplished on Facebook today...
All that - and it's only quarter to four in the afternoon on a slow Sunday.
You may not find communicating with your fellows useful, but I certainly do. Contrary to the ignorant and idiotic position often seen here on /. (and one continues to be held in defiance of repeated corrections on the matter), there's a lot more to Facebook than playing Farmville and posting inane photographs.
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Only if you're a clueless idiot with an axe to grind.
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Facebook explains that it is totally not doing racial profiling [arstechnica.com]
I completely get why you're so turgid about them.
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she doesn't want an engineer.
she wants an ad executive who can spin BS out of thin air.
people like her are why 'sales engineer' is a thing.
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I absolut
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Facebook? (Score:1)
Facebook offering engineering advice? (Score:2)
Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook's Regina Wallace-Jones, who is in charge of protecting 1.6 billion people on the social network
Who's in charge of protecting 1.6 billion people from the social network?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I know, some people don't mind living in a fishbowl. "If you've got nothing to hide, blah blah." Even if it was just ads, it would still bother me. But you've also got employers, insurers, and government poking their noses around too.
Don't confuse necessary but not sufficient (Score:2)
with not necessary.
You gotta have the skills to do the job.
And if you look around for two seconds you'll also see that technical skills alone can be sufficient--in sufficient force.
If your technical skills in *any* profession--musician, carpenter, race car driver, professional athlete, and even engineer--are good enough, you can be an asshole and still keep your job.
BUT--that doesn't mean that if you're a nice enough person they'll let your incompetence slide.
Buzzwords come in value packs now, apparently. (Score:2)
Well duh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The impact of engineers goes well beyond the mobile apps, the gadgets, and the security systems that we build. The quest to engineer meaningful solutions... is not just about math and science, it's about making amazing solutions for real people in the real world"
Regina, this is not news. Any software engineer worth their salt (i.e. with a natural aptitude for computer and software engineering and science) knows this. The whole problem with our industry is that management has seen fit to offer jobs to just about anyone who wants to "work with computers". Worse, they employ the ones who *don't* even like the work ... they just want the money (they've heard there's good money in IT), but actually detest the work ... you'll never get inspirational work out of them.
Could it be that you're one of those managers who think they have a monopoly on intelligence and insight ? Some of us have known what you've just said for a decade or two, but management didn't want to listen, because "the numbers". Now that your numbers are looking good, some of you are stumbling on our prior art as if it's new and deep wisdom.
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People Skills! (Score:2)
Shut up (Score:2)
"Don't let anyone tell you that engineering is only about math and science or that engineering expertise is all you have to offer the world."
Except no one has ever told me that, and if they did I've have told them to "shut up and fuck off."
Who said "engineering is only about math..."? (Score:3)
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However, using these ridiculous stereotypes as if being an engineer suddenly incapacitates you from showing common sense or empathy with your users or customers is getting old.
Personal character is very important. (Score:3)
Honesty to others, and especially honesty to self. An engineer has to be a realist in a world of wishful thinkers. He's got to work well with others, but be able to stand up to them as well. He also ought to be bold, but conscientious; sometimes taking risks but never unnecessary or sloppy ones.
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I'm assuming people don't want to hire sociopaths.
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Try spotting them. Sociopaths excel at manipulation. If you don't have the skills to spot them and they get in, you put yourself at risk trying to get them back out.
This is one reason that actual, licensed engineers have a strict code of ethics [nspe.org]. Problem: Software 'engineering' doesn't fall under most states' PE licensing laws. So a lot of the bad actors tend to gravitate toward that profession.
You need to specify "software engineers" (Score:2)
So we know you're not talking about real, actual engineers.
A lot of hate for a good point (Score:2)
There's a lot of hate here for what is not a novel point, but a good one. Who likes to work with the technically brilliant arrogant jerk? What's the point of an awesomely engineered solution that took 5 times longer to develop than a simpler one which also did the job? If you want to do computer science research, go to a university, but 99% of you have not done that and would not thrive in that setting. Software engineering is about building good solutions with simple maintainable code, not about programmin
Wtf. (Score:2)
When did we start listening to EXECUTIVES about what it takes to be good at a job? These are the parasites that don't do any real work, but claim all the credit for things done by other people.
Re: Managerial engineering. (Score:2)
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"Don’t let anyone tell you that engineering is only about math and science or that engineering expertise is all you have to offer the world. Your experiences and your perspectives can help inspire a company to find a different approach to a problem or encourage someone else to speak up."
The headline is a bit inflammatory, the actual quote is about how engineers should have *more* say about how things are done.
At no point did she say that maths and science a
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Of course, for probably 99% of CS jobs, they aren't particularly important, which makes it kind of disappointing that she didn't say that. :-)
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Agreed.
I have to go further than that and agree with her absolutely. Math and Science must pass a sufficient threshold to get things done. Knowing PI to the 125th digit is more mathy, but will probably not particularly help solving any problem. Knowing Partial Differential Equations probably would help in many instances, but when was the last time they came to use for you in programming? Many of us learn more and more about math and science because we love it; we love knowledge.
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I did not know that. I wonder where the outrage is, seriously? I've been told, many times, that a boss sleeping with an employee can never be consensual. I'm told that it starts on uneven terms and that there's no way that the employee can make the choice to be a part of that relationship. I've been told this multiple times and by multiple people.
I'm going to speculate that, by being the owner of the company, they're in a position of authority (or were) and thus any relationship is coercive and illegal/immo
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Precisely. This "you need more than technical ability, you need soft skills" stuff is just one in a long line of things to keep good technical people "in their place". No one ever tell a salesperson that to advance in sales, they'll need to learn to build the product. Nor does a marketing person get told they'll need to service it to advance in marketing. But engineering? Sorry, if you can't do absolutely everything, technical and "soft", you're just a low-level drone. As you say, if I could do everyt
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Bullshit.
For a start, your list is flawed. e.g. Turing was a scientist, and spent much of his time doing administration. He worked with engineers who did a lot of the design work and all of the physical engineering.
Engineering is not only about maths and science. It's the intersection of maths and science with people.
Shit, I hadn't even heard of Korolev (I'm not Russian) but his wikipedia page even states "his greatest strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning".
Organi
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