[hpaavola]

By definition most companies, most teams and most individuals are average. There are very few really good developers and managers. What suits those few does not really matter. They will do great things not matter what. Agile works for most better than the alternatives.

[Tyrannosaurs]

Unless you have a very oddly skewed set of people, by the definition of average most people are average (or close to it)...

[vanderZwan]

I think you missed the part where he implied that what programming culture considers "good" software is nothing short of a near-perfect to perfect technical implementation. In other words: what the other guy called "shitty" is actually the average.

See also the odd thing that most people consider themselves better than average, which by definition cannot be true.

[Tyrannosaurs]

Yes, the idea that almost everyone considers themselves to be a better than average driver.

I've always wondered with that whether the problem is with the question. What it's really checking is whether someone will admit to being worse than average, which is a very different thing to thinking you're worse than average.

[ZeroGravitas]

In "thinking fast and slow", I'm sure the author gave an example of something people will all admit to being below average at.

Googling it, the example given is "starting conversations with strangers" and his theory is that people ignore the question they are asked ("how they compare with average") because it's hard/impossible to actually answer, and instead, without realising it, substitute an easy question ("are you good at x") and answer that instead.

[Tyrannosaurs]

That's interesting. I have Thinking Fast and Slow as an audiobook I've not yet got round to listening to.

Does he talk about other theories? I wonder if there's also an element of what the person has tied up in that skill and what the consequences of being bad at it are?

Certainly it seems unlikely that anyone would want to admit to being bad at their job (kind of tantamount to admitting to be a fraud), or at something which, as with driving, can be actively dangerous if you're bad at it.

[briantakita]

I'd like the flip that thinking on it's head a bit. It's not about "average" or "better or worse" than average. The need to put yourself and others into some sort of ranking stems from the need to categorize everything into a hierarchy.

I'm talking about something more binary. Good or bad. Progress or stagnation. The right or wrong side of history.

I'm also talking about power. Who determines engineering practice. The engineers or the marketers?

Evidence of power is in the corporate hierarchy. Are there n tiers of middle management? Can an engineer truly make a difference at a company? Will the engineer be able to have a voice in what the priority is?

[vanderZwan]

If you want to reduce a problem of this complexity to binary choices, be my guest, but I doubt it will get you anywhere useful.

[briantakita]

Thank you for giving me that freedom ;-,

It saves me from playing games that are not in my favor. It also helps me avoid & call out people's bullshit. Life is too short to play someone else's bullshit game.

Good luck being exploited or exploiting other people ;-)

[briantakita]

I agree.

As an engineer who aspires to be on the leading edge of the practice, I've become more picky with who I work with. Luckily, "those few" tend to also be picky and seek each other out.

When I first started out, I sought people who were entrepreneurial and innovative.