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Facebook Exec Explains Why Technical Skills Aren't Enough To Be a Great Engineer (geekwire.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook's Regina Wallace-Jones, who is in charge of protecting 1.6 billion people on the social network, says math and science skills aren't enough to tackle challenges at a firm. "Don't let anyone tell you that engineering is only about math and science or that engineering expertise is all you have to offer the world. Your experiences and your perspectives can help inspire a company to find a different approach to a problem or encourage someone else to speak up," she said. "The impact of engineers goes well beyond the mobile apps, the gadgets, and the security systems that we build. The quest to engineer meaningful solutions... is not just about math and science, it's about making amazing solutions for real people in the real world. It's about pushing mankind to its outer limits by inspiring the world to imagine bigger solutions than our hands can hold."
Nothing is ever enough for these corporations while there are still dollars in circulation that don't belong to them. Facebook is about making amazing solutions to fill Mark Zuckerberg's pocket, nothing more, nothing less. "Real people in the real world" my bollox
H1b and the will to work 80 hours a week is what they really want.
... would Facebook know about "real solutions for real people"? It's a frickin' social network, fer Chrissake! What exactly do they produce? What particular problems do they address? How is mankind's lot significantly improved by the presence of Facebook?
Signed,
an engineer
licet differant, aequabitur
Facebook's Regina Wallace-Jones, who is in charge of protecting 1.6 billion people on the social network
Who's in charge of protecting 1.6 billion people from the social network?
This... coming from Facebook... is just about the funniest thing I've seen in several days.
"meaningful"
Ah ha.
Ha ha ha ha. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"The impact of engineers goes well beyond the mobile apps, the gadgets, and the security systems that we build. The quest to engineer meaningful solutions... is not just about math and science, it's about making amazing solutions for real people in the real world"
Regina, this is not news. Any software engineer worth their salt (i.e. with a natural aptitude for computer and software engineering and science) knows this. The whole problem with our industry is that management has seen fit to offer jobs to just about anyone who wants to "work with computers". Worse, they employ the ones who *don't* even like the work ... they just want the money (they've heard there's good money in IT), but actually detest the work ... you'll never get inspirational work out of them.
Could it be that you're one of those managers who think they have a monopoly on intelligence and insight ? Some of us have known what you've just said for a decade or two, but management didn't want to listen, because "the numbers". Now that your numbers are looking good, some of you are stumbling on our prior art as if it's new and deep wisdom.
If you don't pray in my school, I won't think in your church.
No, she earns the big bucks because she can make her bosses think it's insightful.
The corporate world is the Art of Bullshitting. In other words, she's a Bullshit Engineer (at least for this article).
Table-ized A.I.
I don't even use Facebook but it's easy to admire their engineering.
To be fair, it's about all I do admire.
But scaling a website to a billion users a day, 8 billion video views a day, however hundreds of billions of ads served per day - and bear in mind they calculate which ad to serve to each user.
That's some pretty solid engineering.