But when you interviewed for this plumbing job, were you asked to explain in detail Bernoulli's principle of fluid dynamics? I think the author's point is ridiculous academically heavy interviews when the actual job is boring ass CRUD.
> Let’s go back to the plumbing example. Imagine you owned a small restaurant with one bathroom and 10 employees. You get a few hundred customers per week and maybe 10% of them use your bathroom. Obviously, you’ve got to have a working bathroom, but does it need to be anything fancier or more advanced than your home toilet? Do you need 10 stalls, motion-activated faucets, Dyson hand dryers, and marble counters? Probably not, unless you’re just trying to project some facade of success.
This gave me the impression he hasn't really thought through what he is saying.
> Just as a good small business owner should hire a humble plumber who knows the standard tools required for small bathrooms, and will pay him market rate, a good engineering manager should hire humble team players who use industry-standard tools to build reliable software, and pay them market rate.
This furthered my sense he hadn't thought through what he was saying.
> Part of the problem is that we over-engineer the software we work on. I am guilty of this as well.
I have no idea what he's getting at here.
> “Oh, so you’re building an app? Does it use AI? Blockchain? ? Take my money and do it!"
Unfortunately investors these days love to hear that. Devs who bring these skills are most definitely adding value, even if the author deems it largely superficial.
> Finally, don’t get comfortable. This isn’t a popular opinion among software engineers, but I believe that many in the field are overpaid relative to the difficulty of the work they do. Sometimes it’s because they are the only people who know some obscure corner of their field, sometimes it’s because their company’s gatekeepers are preventing full access to the talent market, and sometimes it’s because other engineers insisted they overbuild things such that junior devs will take a long time to understand it.
Should plumbers not get comfortable too? At this point I think the author forgot what he was writing about.
I'm not trying to be mean. I was just trying to add value to an analogy I had trouble distilling value from. I am speaking from frustration at seeing comparison here and there lately in developer communities.
To answer your question, I've never been asked in detail about complex algorithms for either plumbing or software work. Maybe I've been lucky or maybe I just exude an unnatural amount of competence (I'm guessing it's the former, I have resting dumb face).
Anyway, I don't think gauging someone's level of understanding is unheard of in the plumbing world. It probably depends if you're going for a junior or senior plumbing position.
Yes I agree with what you are saying looking strictly at my own experience as a candidate and as a hiring manager.
There's nothing wrong to get slowly to the point where you can ask candidates about complex algos, it just allows you to see how far one candidate can go.
The new trands are not supported only buy young people that jump from trand to trand. That was a terrible thought, maybe showing some frustrations?...
But I have to agree with the author, many times we have the tendency to overcomplicate a solution for the problem at hand. To keep it simple and stupid and smart it is close to an art. Especially when there pressure to get things done quickly and you havd to keep on improving an existing solution.
Lots of levels touched by the ideas in this article.
