Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Yeah, for me the key thing is professionalism (a loaded word, worth an entire book). If everyone on the team "has it", then whether people are more direct or less direct probably won't matter, because everyone understands their role and their duty, and aligns their behaviours and their interpretations accordingly.

Anecdotally, for every "bad situation" I've ever been in in the workplace, I could point to at least one person who was not being professional.

Many disciplines have a real "culture of professionalism" (and I've operated in these disciplines prior to switching to to eng), but I don't think software engineering has that. I think it's probably related both to the relative abundance of workers without formal instruction, and to the lack of standards across academic programmes / bootcamps etc.




It’s also sign (IMO) of the rapid growth in the field.

When there is a severe shortage of warm bodies and things go up and to the right, a lot of ‘less important’ expectations get overlooked.

When it does that for a long time, people sometimes forget why the original expectations were even there in the first place. Then, when it’s no longer up and to the right, we have to figure it all out again or it falls apart.

Do it enough time and it gets embedded in official professional standards, etc.

That said, I’ve certainly run across many Engineers (with the ring type) that do plenty of unprofessional things. They just figure out how to do them passive aggressively or sidestep what would run afoul of the official standards. But it’s the same thing.


That's pretty much in line with my observations as well.

It's not to say that accredited engineers are automatically better, or that accredited engineering programmes are perfect, or anything like that. Like you pointed out, there's no shortage of examples/arguments to the contrary. (Personally, my background is medical, so it's a bit different than accredited engineering programmes, but I also am familiar with those having been involved in a bunch of senate-level evaluation of programmes, etc, at my school.)

But I do think accredited programs have certain benefits, and that the software world should pay attention to what other engineering disciplines get right.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: