Hacker News Perspective: “I’m a software developer — how dare you ask to see my code! How dare you even imply that developers should be writing code! The best software organizations are the ones where barely a few people (out of thousanda of developers) actually write any code at all.”
You're completely right, maybe a software developer's total contribution to the bottom line can be conveyed with a few snapshots of context-less code. Maybe every complex problem humanity faces today has an equally easy solution. Maybe nuance and being methodical is for chumps.
> maybe a software developer's total contribution to the bottom line can be conveyed with a few snapshots of context-less code.
I've never suggested someone should be fired if they can't produce code snippets. But it's fair to expect people who don't actively code (when they're not managers or have a non-coding title) to have a reason they're not coding. And there are many perfectly great reasons, especially for very senior engineers. But if someone isn't coding and they're not actually doing anything else of particular value... well, they're not valuable engineers.
Code is not the single-and-only decider of an engineer's contributions, but I reject the notion that it can't be a starting filter to evaluate someone's contributions, and the assessment to proceed from there.
;-)