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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Not as much as it depends on human communications, organization, self-management, etc.

Most technical challenges in my experience end up being reduced to word problems.

All of the stuff you mentioned is probably 10% of it. You can be bad at the 10% if you're great at the 90%.

Word problem? That's not a technical challenge. That has to do with writing and communications, which are ubiquitous to all types of work.

I think you're misunderstanding the premise here.

I think you're mistaking work for being puzzle-solving.

Work is always about people. If it's not about people, it's probably research, which is different from work.

Someone needs to solve the technical puzzles, software engineers are people who can do that, being good at managing things is a plus but it isn't what defines the role. There are plenty of roles at companies for people who can manage everything else but not technical things, like product manager or people manager.

Work is a function of people and problem solving. A balance between the two provides an effective and productive environment for producing good work. I wouldn't praise or idolize the notion that work is always about people.

The reduction of a technical problem to a word problem is the application of years of accumulated knowledge, including, in many cases, Computer Science concepts.

Formalizing word problems and effectively transforming it to a program is inherently a complexity theory exercise.

My experience is that if everybody who took part in the development of software at enterprises would have studied CS, 90% of the word problems would be gone. Most problems arise from the fact that actors underestimate or not understand the complexities that lie in software systems.

Well good thing you learned to read, write, be disciplined and be organized in school along side CS.

I didn't learn CS in school. I'm self taught. I'm 20 years into my career.

That doesn't mean I don't respect a CS education, but I don't think this kind of testing is a good measure of potential.

But you did teach yourself the fundamentals to do your job. So this isn't a good argument against the practicalities of applying CS knowledge in software engineering?

Everything you've listed - communication, organization, and self-management - are qualities of a strong student. These are skills from college that last. I don't know a single successful student who got by on his own or did so without being extremely disciplined. Outside of the homework/exam grind, college was far more social than work life ever was.

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