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

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.

It's most definitely not my code!




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

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

Search: