Great Engineers - where are they? | Hacker News Reader

Great Engineers - where are they?

caterina.net

14 pointsprakash20 comments

Two major flaws I see here:

1) Those (tech hubs) are primarily CA and NY, with some other cities having their own smaller scenes (Boston, Austin, Pittsburgh...)?

It's more like SF/Bay area, then Cambridge/Boston, then Austin/Boulder etc. NYC has a decent tech scene, so does LA by virtue of their size, but they're not tech hubs like SF or Boston/Cambridge. Maybe she forgot MIT is in Cambridge?

2) Great engineers are everywhere. Sure there are a lot of crappy ones but in my experience it's a lot harder to find good front end guys, engineers that understand the ins and outs of javascript/DOM/browser that also have an eye for good aesthetics. Now those are hard to come by.

Extreme one dimensional specialization can be a flaw and one should consider branching out.

But "blogging" and "tweeting" are not skills. Being a popular blogger is one thing, blogging in itself in not an accomplishment.

Writing is definitely a skill. You need that to write good blogs. Being able to create an account on Wordpress.com and write some random bullshit doesn't really count.

Well maybe. In high school I knew I couldn't write that great so rather then writing a ton of little blog entries I tried to take time to write full essay type entries that I could polish a bit (they were still horrible looking back). Over the years my writing has improved and some of that can be attributed to all the blog entries I wrote (or started to write).

The thing is that blogging in itself encourages more organized thinking about a topic. When you go to write a blog entry, you inevitably find that what was in your head is not nearly as coherent as it needs to be in order to write it down. Writing it down forces you to put your thoughts in more order. Do it enough and your thinking naturally becomes more organized in general. You know, like programming does for you.

So blogging in itself does have some value. Tweeting only has the value of forcing you to select what seems most interesting. Which is still of some value.

As someone who is one of those "hardcore eng." types from MIT, one of the biggest differences I noticed between Berkeley/Stanford and MIT was how many Berkeley/Stanford students were actively involved in companies while in school. I think this exposure to industry early on helps students understand that it's not all about the best hardest-core tech. when building great products.

I think the problem in NYC is primarily cultural -- a lot of MIT talent is hardcore eng

Maybe the fact that all their engineers went to same school is scaring people off. Imagine going to a "lesser" school and having to work with that group? Sounds like a nightmare.

There are a lot of good (and great) engineers out there. They just don't seek the spotlight. Most I've met prefer to work on interesting problems and once solved/implemented tend to move on to the next interesting problem.

Most people not closely involved in the problem have no idea how good (or great) some of these people really are or how ingenious some of their solutions can be.

I'd like to hear more details about this. Is there a certain "drive" towards an outer simplicity, say with interaction design or the appearance of a tool or application, that the CA people have developed a knack for?

If that's the case I'd like to know more about it, but I still may not be convinced it's the "right" path. Just look at the inventor of the mouse for example. He was a big advocate for appropriate use of a human interface but never imagined it would be abused to the extent it has, many decades later. For a Lisp analogy, consider C++ which went off on an "object" path and though of much practical use it's completely at odds with say true functional programming or smalltalk. These are crude examples but I have a hunch that what the secret CA sauce represents is some alignment with a mass appeal and existing constructs. That by definition would fit well with quarterly statements, and a short term gain, reinforcing its persuasiveness. To hell with any long term implications.

This article read more like "I hire plenty of great engineers, why aren't you?" The post could have been more in-depth too, while I can see a point she's getting across, it felt like it was lost in it's expression.

First paragraph: "The biggest myth about starting a tech company in NYC is that it's difficult to hire top tier programmers."

Second paragraph: "The reality is it's hard to hire top tier engineers no matter if you're in CA, NY or Vancouver, where Flickr was based."

Contradiction?

Only if read robotically. The whole piece is about "NYC vs. elsewhere", so "difficult" in that first sentence means "relatively difficult".

English is not rigorous machine code; readers should meet writers halfway with generous interpretations, rather than stretch to find possible 'gotcha' interpretations that were unintended.

the way I look at it is that engineers fall into 2 categories, the startup guys who want to take a risk with a new company and corporate guys who want a big name on their resume.

NYC is filled with nothing but the latter. Noone wants to take a risk here. They all want to work at your Goldman Sachs and Citigroups.

Calling NYC a tech hub is insane, sure there is a # of people here who dabble in tech...but that's just a numbers game, NYC is one of the largest cities in the world. But percentage wise? Austin TX probably has a better ratio than NYC.

What about the quants?

They aren't engineers :|

They are Research Scientists?

Indeed. It was noteworthy that she mentioned Cal Evans, who I'm guessing is English and in the US on a work visa. If he was American, he'd be a founder rather than an employee.

New NYC startup looking for front-end JS developer: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057281

Reporting in.

Someone lacks sense of humor...

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