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Comment by WantonQuantum | Hacker News Reader

As a software engineer I can say that in my 20 years of experience none of this is true. Like any technical discipline, different engineers have different approaches and experience. But this obviously false dichotomy of two camps and unsupported analogy with film critics strikes me as the writings of someone who has never actually worked in the field.

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> the writings of someone who has never actually worked in the field

Hmmm... Does it seem like they have never actually worked in the field due to the dominance of Camp 2? (Camp 1 people, IMX, excuse their lack of practical experience by publishing things along the lines of "doctors are not required to suffer from the diseases which they treat")

I have lots of experience.

>the writings of someone who has never actually worked in the field.

I think it may be worse than that - I've had the fortune ('mis' or 'good') to listen to folks whose only experience with something was academic ... but at least they could parrot the Academia-Designed Best Practice™ when asked about something

This ... was totally different

The film critics analogy is not supported indeed, but I consider the rest of the article as brilliant. It reminds me Steve Jobs' interview about building team of A players instead of Bs and Cs. If some manager is OK about hiring Bs and Cs they will persuade the manager that what they did is the best possible way of solving the problem. In my opinion, existence of Bs and Cs in the team eventually causes an idiocracy crisis because typical A does not want to work with not A because of boredow and typical not A does not want to work with As because of hard to show off. Just look at your quotes:

> As a software engineer I can say that in my 20 years of experience none of this is true.

> this obviously false dichotomy of two camps

> the writings of someone who has never actually worked in the field

You are talking neither about needness of the work nor about to falsificate yourself's work nor about to falsificate at least your opinion. You are talking about your-opinion-is-always-true attitude. I don't know what you have defeloped per your 20 years of experience but you are talking exactly like the representative of the 2nd camp who does not consider the work as the most important thing ever. I don't know anything about you but I do not want to work with any person who considers his years as important point - because no C engineer (also scientist, music composer, mathematician) with N years of commercial experience will become at least B just by the matter of years.

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