Hacker News Reader

Comment by whataretensors | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those 'common' knowledge things that is pushed forward by non-engineers and further backed up by other non-engineers. Since we account for ~ 1e-3 or less of the population we are so outnumbered it becomes part of the culture.

If you can program you are likely among the smartest people in the world and can do better at any analytical task than almost anyone else.

View on HN

> If you can program you are likely among the smartest people in the world and can do better at any analytical task than almost anyone else.

That's an awfully strong unsupported statement.

Considering 90% of “programming” as a trade, especially as it pertains to this audience, is basically gluing Excel sheets together or figuring out more clever ways to extract capital from consumers...

I would like to see a compiler/PL expert or a ML expert take on extending our knowledge of quantum mechanics or cosmology, though, since they’re apparently better at solving analytical problems than everyone else. Maybe Bryan Cantrill or Theo de Raadt can go team up with Stephen Hawking and we can finally explain dark matter conclusively. Programmers were all that was missing, it seems like.

so I am either a lifelong academic physicist or I am an idiot?

Who takes out your garbage?

No, the problem is that intelligence doesn't work that way to begin with. Not only the smartest people are programmers, and being a smart programmer doesn't make you capable of doing someone else's job.

> If you can program you are likely among the smartest people in the world and can do better at any analytical task than almost anyone else.

This one of prime reasons why young managers with engineering background fail. And why everyone around them concludes that just anyone else would be better, that stereotype is true and nerds are arrogant dicks. It is incredibly frustrating to work with know it all who knows zero about your work, but is utrely convinced that him being smartest makes up for that.

Coincidently, managers and analysts with engineering background without above believe have a chance to be good.

The people you reference exist, and they are frustrating. But if you are a good developer and really want to be a good manager, your analytic tools can really help.

Rule number one. A good manager does no actual work. They rely on others to do work, your job is to empower everyone who works for you to be productive, solve problems and to look to you for help whenever blocked. You are only as good as your subordinates.

> > If you can program you are likely among the smartest people in the world and can do better at any analytical task than almost anyone else.

Designing a system for humans is NOT an analytical task. It can be supported via analytics, but it's a political task (that requires others to be convinced that it is a good solution. For example, you can raise income levels, but if people get pissed off at inequality, you can't argue your way with numbers. They may or may not take it. And that was my point in the article).

Yea you know nothing about engineering management. To a man with a hammer every problem is a nail, and you love your hammer.

I’m an engineer. I’ve built a 45 person engineering team that shipped dozens of releases of award winning software without ever missing a schedule or compromising quality. There is nothing but analytical tasks for the engineering manager.

1. How do you maximize developer productivity? Motivation? Job satisfaction? How do you help them make technical decisions and plans?

2. What process best allows your specific teams to ship quality releases on time? How much planning overhead is necessary to do so, and how much isn’t benefiting the process or product?

3. How do you make your quality assurance staff most productive at finding and reporting problems? How can they best organize their testing to ensure the most useful/necessary test coverage, and how do they communicate their progress clearly?

4. How well do all these things meet the needs of your first level customer, the product owner?

5. How do you communicate your groups capacities to executives? How do you tell them what can be done, what can’t be done, and what shouldn’t be done?

Your tools, technologies and customer requirements are changing over time. Analysis never ends, you can always get better.

All the things you think are important, aren’t

lol

You sound like you somewhat understand politics more than you really understand engineering. Engineering is not math. Neither you can practice it in an idealized world and winning all arguments by showing a pretty table of numbers; you already cited tradeoffs and even with just that they are more often than not subject to opinions, and then I remind that not even all the "tradeoff" are known (far, very very far, from that). And big projects are obviously highly integrated with politics from the very beginning.

Now I understand that there exist some people still named engineers that are only preoccupied about how to make a mechanical item solid and light enough to satisfy a requirement, or how to design a really cool and fast hash table. This is still completely in the engineering field, but only constitute a (tiny) part of it. And even then it is dubious to consider they are either not at all preoccupied about how to work efficiently with their peers, or not even subject to that kind of consideration.

"...better at any analytical task"

Agreed. Though I do not consider managing people to be an "analytical task."

Have you ever managed people? I couldn't disagree more, unless you're using "analytical" in some narrow mathematical sense.

In that case it is counterexample, because plenty programmers sux at analysing people or political situation and dealing with them.

I don't think it is inherent to job. But youngsters without social skills are seen as potential techies even if they are not that great at math or anything really related.

The only people who think that managing people isn’t an analytic task, are either bad managers or clueless.

Or maybe they don't see the world so Black and White :)

Analysis isn’t a black and white issue, it’s the collection of factual data to help make the best decisions.

Key rule from Pragmatic Marketing. “Your opinion, while interesting, is irrelevant”.

It's funny how opinionated you are for someone that thinks that opinions don't matter?

I'm more than happy to hear a differing opinion. Let me ask you kindly to use your analysis skills and answers a simple question in regards to what's important when managing.

How come there are so few engineers who are CEO's of Fortune 500 companies?

Easy to explain: they spend their formation years making things instead of going after rich connections.

Consider how many dropouts are at fortune 500 lists. Or how many were born into money and power.

Please establish tbe facts first. What is the % of engineering CEOs vs % of engineers in general corporate employment. How was this data measured? How does it define “engineer”?

I stopped being called an “engineer” after i became a “manager”. 6 years later I became a CEO. And i don’t have a college degree. How would I have been categorized?

1 in 1000? seems too low. I found a stat for Germany 2010, and it says engineers were 0.8% of the population, or 8e-3

Reply on news.ycombinator.com