
Great Engineers - where are they? - prakash
http://www.caterina.net/archive/001215.html
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fjabre
Two major flaws I see here:

1) _Those (tech hubs) are primarily CA and NY, with some other cities having
their own smaller scenes (Boston, Austin, Pittsburgh...)?_

It's more like SF/Bay area, then Cambridge/Boston, then Austin/Boulder etc.
NYC has a decent tech scene, so does LA by virtue of their size, but they're
not tech hubs like SF or Boston/Cambridge. Maybe she forgot MIT is in
Cambridge?

2) Great engineers are everywhere. Sure there are a lot of crappy ones but in
my experience it's a lot harder to find good front end guys, engineers that
understand the ins and outs of javascript/DOM/browser that also have an eye
for good aesthetics. Now those are hard to come by.

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bh23ha
Extreme one dimensional specialization can be a flaw and one should consider
branching out.

But "blogging" and "tweeting" are not skills. Being a popular blogger is one
thing, blogging in itself in not an accomplishment.

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ichverstehe
Writing is definitely a skill. You need that to write good blogs. Being able
to create an account on Wordpress.com and write some random bullshit doesn't
really count.

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icefox
Well maybe. In high school I knew I couldn't write that great so rather then
writing a ton of little blog entries I tried to take time to write full essay
type entries that I could polish a bit (they were still horrible looking
back). Over the years my writing has improved and some of that can be
attributed to all the blog entries I wrote (or started to write).

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tom_pinckney
As someone who is one of those "hardcore eng." types from MIT, one of the
biggest differences I noticed between Berkeley/Stanford and MIT was how many
Berkeley/Stanford students were actively involved in companies while in
school. I think this exposure to industry early on helps students understand
that it's not all about the best hardest-core tech. when building great
products.

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cantastoria
_I think the problem in NYC is primarily cultural -- a lot of MIT talent is
hardcore eng_

Maybe the fact that all their engineers went to same school is scaring people
off. Imagine going to a "lesser" school and having to work with that group?
Sounds like a nightmare.

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johnohara
There are a lot of good (and great) engineers out there. They just don't seek
the spotlight. Most I've met prefer to work on interesting problems and once
solved/implemented tend to move on to the next interesting problem.

Most people not closely involved in the problem have no idea how good (or
great) some of these people really are or how ingenious some of their
solutions can be.

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lvecsey
I'd like to hear more details about this. Is there a certain "drive" towards
an outer simplicity, say with interaction design or the appearance of a tool
or application, that the CA people have developed a knack for?

If that's the case I'd like to know more about it, but I still may not be
convinced it's the "right" path. Just look at the inventor of the mouse for
example. He was a big advocate for appropriate use of a human interface but
never imagined it would be abused to the extent it has, many decades later.
For a Lisp analogy, consider C++ which went off on an "object" path and though
of much practical use it's completely at odds with say true functional
programming or smalltalk. These are crude examples but I have a hunch that
what the secret CA sauce represents is some alignment with a mass appeal and
existing constructs. That by definition would fit well with quarterly
statements, and a short term gain, reinforcing its persuasiveness. To hell
with any long term implications.

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Ixiaus
This article read more like "I hire plenty of great engineers, why aren't
you?" The post could have been more in-depth too, while I can see _a_ point
she's getting across, it felt like it was lost in it's expression.

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jack7890
First paragraph: "The biggest myth about starting a tech company in NYC is
that it's difficult to hire top tier programmers."

Second paragraph: "The reality is it's hard to hire top tier engineers no
matter if you're in CA, NY or Vancouver, where Flickr was based."

Contradiction?

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gojomo
Only if read robotically. The whole piece is about "NYC vs. elsewhere", so
"difficult" in that first sentence means "relatively difficult".

English is not rigorous machine code; readers should meet writers halfway with
generous interpretations, rather than stretch to find possible 'gotcha'
interpretations that were unintended.

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vaksel
the way I look at it is that engineers fall into 2 categories, the startup
guys who want to take a risk with a new company and corporate guys who want a
big name on their resume.

NYC is filled with nothing but the latter. Noone wants to take a risk here.
They all want to work at your Goldman Sachs and Citigroups.

Calling NYC a tech hub is insane, sure there is a # of people here who dabble
in tech...but that's just a numbers game, NYC is one of the largest cities in
the world. But percentage wise? Austin TX probably has a better ratio than
NYC.

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aaronblohowiak
What about the quants?

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omouse
They aren't engineers :|

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ojbyrne
Indeed. It was noteworthy that she mentioned Cal Evans, who I'm guessing is
English and in the US on a work visa. If he was American, he'd be a founder
rather than an employee.

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aaronblohowiak
New NYC startup looking for front-end JS developer:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057281>

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olalonde
Reporting in.

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olalonde
Someone lacks sense of humor...

