The Best Engineers Think Like Investors, Not Builders | Hacker News Reader

The Best Engineers Think Like Investors, Not Builders

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8 pointsFlicflac4 comments

Is this the case for most careers, because it seems to me it's a software industry issue. Maybe this applies elsewhere, but is it to the same extent? Are the best civil engineers the ones that think like investors? How about nuclear physicists or airplane mechanics?

> I have a rule that any engineering work must have a minimum of 2x of the rewards to justify the cost. If I spend a month migrating, it has to save me two months of time to payoff.

That's not engineering though, it's management and/or business. Why study years and years of how computers work, to then think about people and business problems? It's just interesting to me that it's a common industry expectation.

> Why study years and years of how computers work, to then think about people and business problems?

Because in school, you study engineering in a vacuum. In the real-world, you have financial constraints, time constraints, and business goals to meet.

Those are all fine, and to some extent it can be considered for engineering, but isn't there a line to draw somewhere? At some point leveraging your expertise to do other work turns into a different role completely, at least in practice. I also think in programming, because it requires a high amount of creativity, there is lots of room for improvement that is only accessed by experienced programmers, which end up transitioning away into those other roles.

When you enter into an (employment) relationship, that decision is an investment. Aside from salary and perks, you need to consider the long term impact to your career. Will you be growing (i.e., becoming for marketable) or mindlessly stamping out widget (that'll turn your CV into a forgettable shade of beige)?

If it helps, think like an entrepreneur. That is, what does your exit look like? Will you exit better off, or worse (i.e., you haven't kept pace with the market).

In either case, it's not a job...it's an investment.

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