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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."
And that's why she earns the big bucks. Because she's the one with this insightful knowledge which no one ever though about before.
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.
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
And yet... how many of us have actually made a product 1+ billion "real people in the real world" use and how many are just being Internet warriors in the comments field? I've seen a lot of engineers get lost in technical or academic challenges, philosophical issues or just perceived wants and needs the customers/users would have that they really don't. Cue the infamous "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." when Apple released the iPod. Or why "assume a spherical cow" has become a running joke of theoretical models.
There is a lot of hubris that it's what the STEM people do that's important and everything else is fluff. If nobody else will stick their neck out, I will: I don't really understand people, like what the mainstream wants or why. And that's okay, because the people who do generally haven't don't know much about actually building it. And sometimes the economists will tell you that yes, people want it and yes, we could build it but you'd be spending $100 for a solution to a $10 problem. And sometimes you build it and it's the best solution nobody's heard about.
real world <-- investigate, analyze --> problems
problems <-- design, build, test --> solutions
solutions <-- communicate, distribute --> real world
I've written a lot of good code that went to naught not because there was anything wrong with it, but because it wasn't actually solving real world problems. And you can of course blame the spec or that the user is holding it wrong, but at the end of the day it just isn't providing value. So I try to go beyond what they teach in STEM classes and work on what's the user really trying to achieve and can I deliver on that. Or maybe it's just in-house what the business analyst wants or the way the architect or development team wants to build things but there's hardly any position where you don't need those skills.
I have this person at work in mind, no doubt he's very bright but he's also quite terrible at talking to people in a way they can understand. Even for an IT person it becomes an incoherent rant of technical details, niche concepts and proscribing solutions instead of explaining them. Meanwhile I pushed through a good technical change recently asking "What if the person changes his mind?" because the proposed solution failed to take that into account. That I pointed out how we'd already solved this other places helped, of course. But if nobody pays attention, we're going to reinvent the wheel and poorly, over and over again.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings