"In the end I think Apple got an engineer for the next twenty-five years that, though not the cleverest engineer, was one that worked quickly to prototype new ideas and took on some of the gruntwork that not every engineer wanted to work on."
Some of us like doing the blue-collar parts. Plumbing, prototyping, fixing bugs, fit & finish, tackling tech debt.
Alas, today's leetcode themed hazing rituals, err, interviewing filters out people like me, and presumably John Calhoun.
I was fortunate to manage project and product teams with a mix of skills, temperments, experience. Pairing up doers with esthetes can work out great. In that "whole greater than the sum" sort of way.
FWIW, most of the doers (I've managed or worked with) had no CS education and experience. Just an interest, curiousity in tech. Notables were a ballet dancer, historian, handful of mechanics, biologist, aeronautic engineer, sculpture, and of course musicians. People who would never get hired, much less considered, today.
Quote from another blog entry
"In the end I think Apple got an engineer for the next twenty-five years that, though not the cleverest engineer, was one that worked quickly to prototype new ideas and took on some of the gruntwork that not every engineer wanted to work on."
Some of us like doing the blue-collar parts. Plumbing, prototyping, fixing bugs, fit & finish, tackling tech debt.
Alas, today's leetcode themed hazing rituals, err, interviewing filters out people like me, and presumably John Calhoun.
I was fortunate to manage project and product teams with a mix of skills, temperments, experience. Pairing up doers with esthetes can work out great. In that "whole greater than the sum" sort of way.
FWIW, most of the doers (I've managed or worked with) had no CS education and experience. Just an interest, curiousity in tech. Notables were a ballet dancer, historian, handful of mechanics, biologist, aeronautic engineer, sculpture, and of course musicians. People who would never get hired, much less considered, today.
Every team needs at least one doer.