[bedobi]

I don't disagree with this, but sadly, a prerequisite for that is a position of privilege where you're able to push back against non-valuable work. I've seen many, many very good software developers that have this quality, but get overruled, and their true value goes unrealized as a result.

[arcticbull]

Part of what it means to be a senior engineer is that you have a mastery over the soft skills/people skills commensurate with your engineering abilities. Someone who knows how a bridge should be architected but cannot navigate the politics of city council necessary to get it built isn't much of a bridge builder.

The importance of good politics cannot be understated. Politics in this case is roughly defined as getting people onboard with your plans.

[conductr]

While your bridge analogy is true, I feel it's even more valuable to have an informed view for what's on the other end of that bridge. If you work the politics and use all the right materials to build an efficient bridge that's great. But a wonderful bridge to nowhere is still a bridge to nowhere.

I say this because as a finance guy, I've been on lots of projects that look great on a spreadsheet and marketing, sales, or somebody else is really pushing for the investment. That's the point where a technical person takes over and builds what's asked, or a really great technical person may ask a few questions and raise a few points nobody else considered and the whole bubble bursts as we realize it's not feasible/or we can test it in a certain way before investing big time/money into it.

Probably not mastery of SE as OP asked. But mastery as a business partner within an organization.

[healsjnr1]

That sounds amazing, sadly in a lot of organisations that isn't how it pans out.

Either the engagement with technology doesn't happen early enough, or when it does, the technology point of view isn't given the weight it deserves. The ideas have already caught and too many people are invested and have 'faith' it will all work out.

The crux of this is that many of those people who carry the weight in decision making don't actually carry any risk or responsibility for delivery. Given the scale of engineering and time to deliver, by the time it comes to fruition they've moved on, so they never experience accountability for ignoring the advice.

[disgruntledphd2]

It depends on the organisation, to be honest.

For instance, in my experience at a FAANG, the issue was often that a new technical solution was proposed, architected and built before any business/market people got involved with the result that loads of amazing, brilliantly architected and completely useless projects got built.

(My favourite time was when a (really smart, to be fair) software engineer rediscovered the normal distribution while looking for a way to reduce storage requirements for an analytics product).

[robertlagrant]

If you have a load of smart engineers, sometimes it can be a more successful strategy to just build something than to pay EY £250k to do market analysis, get a load of execs bought in who then will "make it work" even if it shouldn't, or kill it off even if they shouldn't, and then finally get a committee-written spec handed over to be built in a rush.

[disgruntledphd2]

Sure, there are pathologies at both ends of the spectrum. I do think it's worthwhile (particularly here), that software engineers/technical people are subject to their own set of development pathologies.

[PaulHoule]

The FANG method of software dev is extraordinarily expensive, particularly at the G.

[conductr]

True. I’ve witness all of these things as well. I’m not implying that organizational decision making is perfect if only it had better technical people providing inputs by any means.

Again as a finance guy, this is a major skill I have attempted to develop for myself/team. When projects spin up, I’m typically at forefront and involved in every project technical or not (controlling the purse strings). Many finance guys are know it all’s TBH. They build their ROI models, etc. and making dozens of assumptions it’s then treated as gospel. For some reason, it’s valid to ask “why is this project underperforming our expectations” but it’s often taboo to ask “did our expectations even make sense”. I try to change that where it exists too.

All to say, people like me find people at the onset of the project to gather inputs. If I know you as well versed with track record of valuable insights, I’m more likely to reach out early. If I have worked with you at this stage and you your input is just one of “we need specs/tell us what to build and we can build it” you’ve not added any value to the conversation and I’m likely to not include you next time because I know I just need to bring you specs once project is approved and that’s a different conversation for another day.

This is why I say “business partner”. Being able to understand your company, the politics within, how decisions are made, where you can inject value along the way. These are all traits of people with fast career growth in slower growing firms. You transform from Programmer #13 to people knowing and respecting your name. This is important in talent reviews, etc.

[vram22]

Good one. Another on the same lines, and also related to your parent comment's point about politics, is:

Getting the users in the org to, you know, actually use that well-specced, well-built project, which was delivered within time and budget (or with only a small overrun). I mean, use it at all, or use it enough for it to deliver its benefits. Real life issue. Seen it on at least a few projects I've worked on, including two early in my career. Inertia, luddite fears, turf wars can be some of the causes.

[vram22]

Here is another example of a project or feature users did not use at all, or used less than was expected / wished for. This one is from a Google Talk:

Watch "The Effective Engineer | Edmond Lau | Talks at Google" on YouTube https://youtu.be/BnIz7H5ruy0 - at about 3:21 in.

[asdffdsa]

The most difficult hurdle is that there's never that direct communication between the finance guy and the tech guy. Projects tend to get lost in translation, where you have multiple layers of departments and emails and roles playing telephone. If an organization can have that direct finance-to-tech guy/gal link, it would be the most effective way to provide the most effective value imo.

[conductr]

It’s definitely a problem worth focus. I recommend networking with some of the finance folks. It’s as simple as a lunch meeting, ask them about some of the projects that are in planning phase, offer your assistance. You’ll have to figure out what is the post-COVID equivalent.

I find some in finance and IT get along fairly well and can build a bigger rapport fairly easy. We’re all excel nerds and many of us have taught ourselves how to program to an extent (VBA, etc).

Depending on the organization, we tend to be more focused on leadership support. A junior analyst will get much more face time with VP and up than down. So that’s part of the problem is those connections just don’t always exist. When they do, it might be with an IT director which has maybe become too far removed from codebase or implementation challenges. It happens with every department within the organization, not just IT. My experience is outside the software industry so may work a little different if sole function of the company is software.

[Aeolun]

You can be as nice a person as you want, if you are talking with an asshole, you are in for a bad time.

[gofreddygo]

Therein lies a catch.

In your analogy if I get really good at getting stuff passed through city council, what would I optimize for ?

A: Building better bridges ?

Or B: building better money making bridges (potentially of of inferior quality) ?

I'd bet there are more takers for B. And at that point we now have better city council optimizers than better bridge builders.

Lets say we now make a team of some folks from both groups. Now who's going to able to get more people onboard their plans? Its the city council optimizers again. And now some bridge builders figure it out and become better optimizers than builders.

We then take it a step further and add competing teams. Same thing repeats. The team better at city council optimizing beat the better builders all the time.

In this whole process its the quality of the bridges that stays the same ( in most cases it goes down) and the costs of it keep going up.

My sad, unfortunate observations in the field.

Love to see a way out.

Edit: in this way of thinking , the assumption is that there are higher chances of making more money from poorer quality bridge than a more advanced, higher quality bridge. One exception to that is the strategy where you first provide better bridges at lower cost and then bump up the prices for maintenance.

[conjectures]

Unfortunately this assumes that the politics of the city council is somewhat outcomes focused. If the mayor is intent on awarding the contract to her uncle no amount of 'soft skills' will help (and attempts to apply them may be counter-productive).

It's usually helpful to have an internal locus of control, and look for things in oneself (here, soft skills) that can be changed. However, sometimes reality just doesn't afford opportunities in a given situation. Accepting where that is that case means being able to extract oneself from a situation rather than wasting time on it.

[mpweiher]

Hmm...why should the onus be on the engineer?

An organisation that does this is broken.

Most are.

While it is important to realise that this brokenness is in fact widespread, I don't think it should be normalised.

[arcticbull]

That's an unfortunate function of being human. The right idea won't always win if it's coming from the wrong person.

[ragar90]

If you do not know how to build a bridge you should not be in charge of taking the decision of howto build it

[stonecharioteer]

This happens to me at my organization fairly often. I build solutions I'm asked to build and then an abusive architect coopts that work and rewrites it in a shitty, unusable way. Users cry at me, but when I tell them what happened, they are silent. No one cares enough to cry to leadership. And the leadership have clearly said they have no intention of overruling what said architect talks about.

[davewritescode]

Leadership puts an architect in place because they don't have the time to care about code level details. I would personally mention it to leadership but frame it in a way that your work is being rejected but nobody is explaining to you why so that you can learn and do better next time.

Unfortunately in a large software engineering organization tact and political savvy is more important than raw engineering skill. Once you've been in the industry long enough, you'll understand it.

One of the problems that's common in organizations is that most of the work at the junior level is highly focused on individual contribution and that completely flips at some point in your career.

[intricatedetail]

Sounds like trauma bonding. I'd leave yesterday unless there is a bad market.

[kostarelo]

Totally agree and I wish to those people to leave the place they are currently in and find a better where their skills are truly recognised.

[crispyambulance]

There's another facet to this which I think is far more important that OP question of "What [exactly] does mastery 'look like'?".

The more important question is "how do you cultivate mastery?" How does your organization get to a place where people can develop mastery instead of the organization trying to create it instantly by hiring "the right people"? Regardless of what people may claim, hiring is not a solved problem. It's _really_ hard to identify candidates that are true masters at what they do (let alone getting them to quit their job and join your team).

By the same token, it's also _really_ hard for true masters to find a place that understands their value and, more importantly, will allow them to do their thing and provide career satisfaction. A lot of talented people are locked out of jobs because someone thought their career trajectory wasn't quite right/impressive.

Training and mentorship, however, are better understood and have lower stakes. It makes me think of Bell Labs. I know a couple folks who worked there who had very "unimpressive" backgrounds, they started as techs but rubbed elbows with stellar talent in a place that cultivated discovery and collaboration. Over time while there and in other places they were able to rise to principal design engineers, beyond what many who went to elite universities achieve. They credit their formative years in Bell labs with getting them started on their career path.

The thing is, Bell Labs didn't have an epically selective hiring process, nor was the compensation insanely high. They provided an environment that _attracted_ people with mastery and those who were passionate about what they do, they developed talent within their walls rather than trying to merely buy it or find it.

This was for electrical engineers, but the same ideas can apply to software engineers.

[vram22]

Great point. Seen some of the things you describe, in places where I worked.

[arcticbull]

That's a tough one. Often the sensibility about what needs to be done comes from hours/weeks/month/years hacking away at their codebase in their specific setting. Much of that has to be rebuilt from scratch in a new place. If you don't find that same connection with your work at the new place - or are unable to develop the relationships with your peers or your manager, you may not end up able to make that impact at the new place either.

I tend to encourage folks who come to me about quitting to explore opportunities within the team/organization/company before leaving so they can leverage all the social capital they've built up.

[kostarelo]

Absolutely, especially in bigger organisations where one part may be completely different in terms of how is organized and how is operating from another one.

[plutonorm]

If you are not being heard where you are it's very likely the culture is toxic or you are not respected. In either case it's time to leave.

[PaulHoule]

I worked at one place that was a basket case and finally started to push back. The HR person seemed shocked that I was concerned with the business value of a project, but i had people telling me i wasnt worth what i was being paid -- I could show the next assignment had $0 in business value so if i spent more than 0 hours on it I'd just be digging myself a hole.

[intricatedetail]

If you think something does not produce value and you have knowledge to back it up (you could think something is of no value if you don't know the big picture), and you are "forced" to do it anyway, then it all depends on pay. If you get a lot of money for this, you can exchange these later to fill any gaps that this will create or simply leave the co, unless you want to be known for doing fool's errands and stroking managers egos.

[guytv]

Almost agree. I would say that if this is the case, Pay is local optimisation.

On the long run, if you stay in such a company your market value will by reduced as it is

(a) psychological very difficult to resist such culture to influence your mind, unlimitedly transforming you.

(b) will eventually turn your life into a saga of bitterness and resentment, lower self esteem.

(c) arguably, such a company will ultimately fail in their business.

so you're probably better off take a possible temporary pay reduction for a better happiness and higher pay on the long run.

[intricatedetail]

All valid points!

[jkingsbery]

Most engineers I know in this situation move on to a new project before too long.

[banner2018]

Precisely my observation of last couple decades.