I have the feeling that I'm missing something here. Reading the headline, I expected a real, genuine and directly applicable advantage for a software engineer. But I couldn't find it.
While it leads to an interesting life for sure, I don't see how the writer's suggestions (or your suggestions) make for an unfair advantage for any particular role in tech.
Your examples also don't map to a direct advantage in a tech career. If you'd say that it helps indirectly and in intangible ways, then perhaps, yes. But in interviews I did, the lessons from your examples would not have helped. (I'm an iOS software engineer, by the way).
Well, I'd get rid of the word "unfair" - that's not actually true.
But putting that aside, I would guess that maybe you're in a very large company? I think the more siloed and specific your role is, the less helpful this sort of thing would be. I work at a ~20 person startup, and an engineer who can think with a product mindset, talk directly to customers and write good user-facing documentation is much more valuable than someone who can just write code to spec. At a 20,000 person company, that's likely not the case.
As a barely competent Dev who just became senior by actively helping out people who looked like they were struggling in the org slack, I firmly disagree.
It's led to friendships with many many people (and their managers) and a broader understanding of lots of things and is definitely the key to my own career progression.
While it leads to an interesting life for sure, I don't see how the writer's suggestions (or your suggestions) make for an unfair advantage for any particular role in tech.
Your examples also don't map to a direct advantage in a tech career. If you'd say that it helps indirectly and in intangible ways, then perhaps, yes. But in interviews I did, the lessons from your examples would not have helped. (I'm an iOS software engineer, by the way).